O Christmas sweater, O Christmas sweater! Amid a surge in fashion nostalgia¹, the much-maligned Christmas knit is enjoying a moment of irony-infused popularity.

圣诞毛衫！圣诞毛衫！随着时装怀旧风的兴起，曾经饱受攻击的圣诞毛衫正迎来戏剧性的大流行。

Amid a surge in fashion nostalgia, the much-maligned Christmas knit is enjoying a moment of irony-infused popularity.
Individuals and big corporations are hosting holiday events dedicated² to "ugly" or "tacky（俗气的） " Christmas sweaters. Fashionable retailers³ like Bloomingdale's, H&M and Abercrombie & Fitch are putting snowflake（雪花） and reindeer⁴ styles in windows and catalogs. Meanwhile, thrift⁵ stores and websites are out of stock of vintage（古老的） designs, the more elaborate the better.

Brian Philippoi, a 26-year-old employee of a Web design firm, wore a bulky（庞大的，笨重的） cream sweater with a bright alpine⁶ print along with dark skinny jeans and sneakers to a recent party. He describes the sweater as "very 1960s Swiss ski resort." "It's like walking a Great Dane," he says. "You have to show it who's boss."

Searches for "ugly Christmas sweaters" are up 30% in December compared with December last year. On eBay this year, someone paid $282.59 for a sweater with three reindeer across the front, an increase from the website's most expensive holiday sweater last year, which sold for $200. Ebay's sales of holiday sweaters are 24% ahead of last year.

Dunkin' Donuts is giving $60 gift cards to people who post pictures of themselves on Twitter by Dec. 22 in holiday sweaters that are "kitschy（肤浅的，矫揉造作的） or cute or glamorous⁷（迷人的） or ho ho horrible," says a company spokeswoman.

The Christmas sweater started out as homemade, became a mass-market hit in the 1980s and has been a dependable seller ever since, even though "fashion snobs⁸（势利眼） look down their noses at them," says David Wolfe, creative director at the Doneger Group consulting firm. For many, they bring back memories of grandma and a time of year when "everybody just drops their sophistication and goes for the heart."

Randall Ferguson, a 27-year-old who grew up in Michigan, began hosting "ugly sweater parties" in college. "It started out as a way for us to mock（嘲弄，模仿） our moms," he says. For a party he hosted last week in his Manhattan apartment, Mr. Ferguson wore a snowman sweater that he bought for $10 earlier this season on eBay.