‘Tis the season for ugly sweaters at thrift shops

It’s the season to attend an ugly Christmas sweater party. The tradition is a gold mine for local thrift stores, who depend on the business and prepare for it year-round.

Recently, more retail stores have picked up on the ugly sweater craze by offering newly-created ugly Christmas sweaters, but to the purists who know how to dig through a thrift store for a vintage find, that’s just cheating.

At Helping Hands Thrift Store on the Bothell-Everett Highway, manager Jessica White said Christmas sweater season starts at the beginning of November.

“People start coming in because they know it’s going to be a rush and we get in hundreds of Christmas sweaters throughout the year that we’ll put in boxes. We actually have a full truck trailer that’s full of Christmas goods,” she said.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a strategy to take on ugly Christmas sweater seekers.

“Yesterday alone, I think I had at least two dozen people come up to me and said, ‘well, when are you going to put out the new ones’ and ‘what else do you have in back’ or they just try to sneak in back to see if they can find them themselves,” White said.

Remember when parents had to fight over Cabbage Patch dolls in the toy aisles in the 1980s? Chances are the sweaters they were wearing then are the sweaters that hipsters are fighting over now.

“I think anything 80s right now is the new thing. Anything with the thick wool sweaters that kind of look like something your grandpa would wear, people are loving those right now,” White said.

The uglier the sweater, the higher the price. This is how thrift stores boost their profits going into the new year.

“We can sell a Christmas sweater for double or triple the price of any other sweater that’s on our racks, so it’s absolutely huge and the gaudier and the more colorful, the ones that make noises, or have a light-up reindeer nose, people love them,” White said.

Pricey is relative because White runs a thrift store, so the most she’d sell an ugly Christmas sweater for is about $20. That one would have to be just the right shade of ugly.

“They’ll be on the racks, you’ll have stuff that people will buy that kind of will be a little bit more plain. Some people aren’t as brave as others and some people don’t want to do too flashy,” White said.

True, some people opt for a more demure, ugly Christmas sweater and then craft it into a heinous creation with lights, puffy paint and anything else along the lines of Christmas decorations.

White mixes the sweaters in with all the other clothes so they don’t sell out too quickly. She makes you work for it.

Kimberly Litz was sifting through Helping Hands Thrift Store and knows the hunt for an ugly Christmas sweater well.

“My family has been doing it our whole lives. It’s just a funny thing they do. They do Christmas sweaters and play a game at Christmas,” Litz said.

She recalled the ugliest sweater she ever wore.

“It was green and it had a Cocker Spaniel on the front with a Santa hat that had a bow. The dog had a bone in his mouth that actually hung out of his mouth. It was horrible and it was all green. It had a hood and it was all itchy wool.”

That’s ugly.

Truth be told, White said she sprinkles the sweaters throughout her thrift store day-by-day, but she has a secret stash of sweaters in the back room so that they never run out.

“I don’t think that there’s anything people desire more than a great ugly Christmas sweater,” White said. “Good luck!”