Today is the day to profile the 85 year old grandma.

It has been brought to my attention that one of the ways people celebrate the holiday season these days is by throwing and attending something called Ugly Christmas Sweater parties. Apparently the notion is that it's a hoot to dress up in festive apparel in an ironic fashion, making fun of the people who wear these things sincerely. People then get drunk, have unprotected sex, and then drive home in as an intoxicated state as possible.

This offends me as I am a Zulkey and the Zulkeys come from a long line of Christmas sweater designers, manufacterers, sellers, marketers, advocates and wearers. It all started three hundred years ago when my ancestors emigrated to America from Poland by way of somewhere even more third world, I can't remember where. Siberia or something. Our family lived in some little town and they made these special sweaters every Yule for every peasant in the village to wear. That was the only article of clothing they got for the year so everyone was very excited. Our ancestors worked very long and hard on these sweaters which is why they could only produce them all at once one time a year. And they happened to live in the village with a bunch of people who would one day become famous spangle designers, so they fortunately had neighbors who excelled in producing shiny beads, bright thread, sequins, plastic snowflakes and jingle bells.

Anyway then the great cabbage famine eventually sent everyone to the United States and somehow they made it to Chicago. And I don't know, let's say 1/3 of everyone died on the way over and what they did to support themselves on the way over and also to occupy the time was make sweaters. So these sweaters took on even more meaning and specialness on the way over than they previously had, which was a lot. So these sweaters were already very special but then what happened was that they started making these sweaters in the old neighborhoods and everyone loved them and cherished them as the only nice thing they had at Christmas because as immigrants they still couldn't afford anything nice for Christmas, not even a tree or an orange or a neighborhood that had its own church. Very sad. Very meaningful.

So our family continues to this day to make Christmas sweaters, considering red and green to be our ancestral colors, the snowman our mascot and the jingling of a bell our motto. Of course we wear Christmas sweaters all the time, but when we see other people wearing them, it warms our heart to see that our family's tradition lives on, and that their many, many, many deaths and horrifying injuries were not for naught.

So how does it feel to hear that people are mocking our family's trade by wearing them as jokes? How do we like it?

Not very well, I guess.