Your Favorite Tradition: Ugly Holiday Sweaters

It may be this: Sometimes, in our hoity-toity haste to malign a tradition that is seen as perfectly normal in just about every part of the country west of the Hudson River, we forget the true meaning of Christmas -- and, while we're at it, the true meaning of Christmas sweaters. We may not remember that there are real, sophisticated people coming up with ideas for these things at companies like Coldwater Creek, Talbots, Marisa Christina, Quacker Factory and Berek every year, not some committee of demented elves pulling subjects at random from Santa's bag of tricks -- i.e., ice-skating penguins, fiber-optic candy canes, halls-decking bunnies and so on.

We'd like to acknowledge that we have, indeed, used this photo on previous holiday-themed posts. The truth is, we will take any excuse to put Colin Firth on Huffington Post Living. We hope you'll indulge in this. Also, do you have a favorite ugly sweater? What does it look like? - Ed.

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