The most wonderful time of the year. That annual period of the humanity collective coming together like a jellied aspic dish your possibly senile and hysterically unfiltered 90-year-old Aunt Bethany forces you to try at the family get together. An anniversary well celebrated, in which people cast off the yoke of general displeasure with life, and pretend problems they very much still have, don’t exist. Yay! Family!
Brutal disappointment is just as welcome at these capitalist soiree’s as those warm and fuzzies you get when oxytocin, the touchy-feely hormone that gets one all lubed up for trusting, bonding, and even falling in love…has you enjoying said get together. You have to take the absences of Saturday Night Slam Masters under your tree with that Yorkshire pudding you only get once a year…well, good Yorkshire pudding anyways…it’s the natural polarity of all things people. You take the good with the bad, the fast with the slow, the beautiful with the ugley, etc. et. al….yadda yadda yadda.
Speaking of ugly, a great way to salsa-fy a holiday in need of scintillation is by owning a bazooka that shoots robot dogs. That doesn’t exist…best I can do for you is this.
Video of the M-81 robot-dog armed with an RPG-26 at the Army 2022 defense expo. https://t.co/rUnwoCMoyS pic.twitter.com/BEDjnwstN0
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 15, 2022
So we’ll take what we got. And what we have is the UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER. It’s origin story begins in the 1950’s, as this festive garment started out with humble beginnings. Much like any supervillain, these future fashionistas were relegated to background noise, as their more aesthetically pleasing relatives rose to forefront of the great commercialization of Christmas. Known then as “Jingle Bell Sweaters”, these pullovers were only seen in small doses, perhaps on a c-list crooner, or maybe on someone who wanted you to think they were Mickey Rooney. After that brief blip of fabric fame, the Ugly Christmas Sweater disappeared for bit…15 years or so…only to emerge in the most unlikely of places, and not really holiday themed at all. One of America’s dads wore it well for quite some time around the prime time 8 p.m. Thursday slot on NBC. His name was Cliff Huxtable. Now, before you start in with highly inappropriate pudding pop jokes, or revile me for even mentioning that…I’m simply marking a placeholder in the history of Christmas’s favorite apparel based red headed step child.
The sweater didn’t really get it’s holiday due until Clark Griswold had one on for pretty much the entire run time of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. That goofy and uncomely expression became one, ultimately, of holiday cheer, but it’s kitsch had yet to be fully embraced by a loving public. The 90’s were a good reminder of that, as the Ugly Christmas Sweater suffered the same fate as cargo pants, or jean jackets during that decade, sequestering itself in a corner to wait for bad taste to become fashionable. Took about 10 years or so…
2001 saw the very first Ugly Christmas Sweater Party thrown…somewhere in Canada I’m told…leave it to the Canadians. After that, it was a snowball rolling down hill, metaphorically speaking. Flash forward to now, where’s it is an entire generation’s mistletoe, or fruitcake, or figgy pudding. I will give the Ugly Christmas Sweater this…it’s not as cringe as an office secret Santa. One year I was involved in one of those things…wanna know what I got? Finger cots and a non petroleum based emollient. Those things look like this…
AND THIS…
And now you know. There’s an Ugly Christmas Sweater out there for everybody. Hell, they’ve even leveled up into entire Ugly Christmas Suits for Pete’s sake. Magic 93.1’s unofficial holiday mascot is someone wearing an Ugly Christmas Sweater. Check it out.
Enjoy your fashion choices. Embrace traditions. Make new traditions. Whatever they are, wherever they are, we hope they give you all the good vibes this holiday season. From our family to yours, MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR.
Thanks for reading/listening/hanging out. Catch you in 2023.
-Max
