From primary school all the way to corporate and family affairs there is a relatively new Christmas tradition. The ugly Christmas sweater! Could something inspired by the 50’s and perfected in the 80’s unite generations and help people? Let’s have an important discussion on ugly sweaters and how Millennials got it right when they rummaged through our attics and helped others.
2002 Vancouver
Two Millennial College kids, Chris Boyd and Jordan Birch, held the first Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. It was just a small house party with the intention to raise money for others in need, it hosted around 30 attendees. A decade later these two were packing the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver and booking the Dr. Strangelove Band, Greg Drummond, and the Vancouver Sweet Soul Gospel Choir raising tens of thousands of dollars for families with cancer. But there was a dress code….your ugliest sweater.
While Chris and Jordan continued to raise money for children with needs through the Ugly Christmas party, the Ugly 5k, a book, and other things, many of us adopted the fashionable aspect.
As the Ugly Christmas Party grew into a viral tradition in the US, Canada, the UK, and other places, where was a Millennial to get an ugly sweater? The closets and attics of their parents and grandparents! Where did those sweaters come from? The 80’s! But they had their roots in the 1950’s.
The 50’s and the Jingle Bell Sweater
The 1950’s was when the commercialization of Christmas in America really began as we know it. The Silent Generation was thriving under post war programs that made affordable housing and fair wages the norm and they had a post war baby boom, hence the name Baby Boomers for the generation before X.
Along with the commercialization came fashion. The Jingle Bell Sweater was available in department stores. They had festive designs on them for the season of Christmas. They were not as popular with teens or mothers, but the dad’s leaned into them for a few years. It faded away but it created the patterns and the possibilities for another generation to take this design etymology and make it totally awesome!
80’s Sweaters
As uncomfortable a truth as this may be, the Cosby show was the beginning of the fashion explosion of the 80’s sweater. America tuned in week after week to see what sweater the character Cliff would wear next. Sweaters went from being a practical necessity to a fashion statement again.
The store shelves and other television shows and movies reflected these popular sweaters. In the late 80’s I worked in a men’s clothing store named Silveman’s. For 2 Christmas seasons I sold many sweaters with leather patches, neon swaths of colors mixed with earth tones, shoulder pads, and so many other things added to the patterns. And you had to push the sleeves up to showcase your Swatch Watch!
The 80’s would end with a bang for the self aware ugly Christmas Sweater in 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It is now a Christmas classic played in homes every year as people enjoy Chevy Chase leaning into the iconic ugly Christmas sweater vibe with comedic genius.
The Millennial Reminder of What Matters Most on Christmas
The ugly Christmas sweater is now a cultural icon. We wear them at Christmas parties and no longer have to rummage through the attics of generations previous as they are sold to us in every place one can buy clothing. I was a hired photographer at the Macy’s Ugly Christmas party in 2017. Hors d’oeuvres, beverages, a DJ and much pomp and circumstance was part of the affair, but there was no mention of the generous history of the ugly sweater among the opulence and ugly sweaters.
In 2020 the founders of this new tradition published a Christmas book to make sure we remember and help others. “THE UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER REBELLION: It all started with a sweater.” This is a book telling the warm tale of weaving generations together in the spirit of giving instead of mere consumerism. The purchase of every book feeds a family in need.
In our coverage of The Great Cabbage Patch Kid Riots of 1983 and the bittersweet history of Wham’s Last Christmas we have touched on how Christmas is a hard time for so many. As many buy into the consumerism of the season, maybe this year when we wear our ugly sweaters, we not only remember that the ugly sweaters came from the 80’s, but also remember those with less than us and do something that makes a difference.
May we remember as awesome as the sweaters are, that it is even more awesome to help one another. In these uncertain times, we are going to need each other more than we will a perfect gift at 28% interest. The interest in a better world with a little less suffering will give a greater return on investment.
Two men meant for the ugly sweater to be synonymous with giving and uniting generations and people. We can still make that happen and look ironically amazing doing it.
Stay totally awesome!
Stay true to you!
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