We're in stitches over your holiday sweaters

Sears Portrait Studio Best overall A cat, a mouse and cat/skunk adorn Jason Yormark's undersized knit vest. But it's his "40-Year-Old Virgin" pose that won over the judges. Yormark, 33, and co-workers from Microsoft's online services group "thought it would be funny to get some bad Christmas sweaters and get our picture taken." So they found the worst of the worst at a Redmond thrift stores then headed to a Sears Portrait Studio to work it for the camera. "It was strangely natural for us," Yormark says. (SEARS PORTRAIT STUDIO)

The thrift stores are used to the calls by now. Do they have any ugly Christmas sweaters? Cliff Huxtable sweaters? Big ol' knitted sacks, preferably with bears wearing scarves?

"The uglier and weirder and tackier, the better," says Stephanie Watts, the good-humored spokeswoman for Value Village, the national resale chain based in Bellevue. "When did this happen?"

Indeed, the once-loved, then-maligned Christmas sweater is popular again, making appearances at office parties, on Christmas cards, in frat houses and, yes, newspaper contests. Last year we asked readers to send us photos of themselves posing in the ugliest holiday sweater they could find. We got so many responses we decided to bring back the idea this year.

The entries were ambitious: campy photo sessions taken at a Sears Portrait Studio (which seems to be the studio of choice); classroom portraits; group shots taken at "ugly sweater parties"; themed photos (a guy wearing a Christmas cat sweater ... while holding his cat).

While a few people posed just for the contest, most of the photos came from other "ugly sweater" events — some recent, some annual traditions.

Seattle Pacific University's student union, for instance, started its sweater party four years ago. And Rat City Rollergirls team, The Throttle Rockets, sent in a group shot from 2006 — complete with snarling faces and Santa sweaters.

Christmas sweaters have been around since the invention of the loom (and probably earlier). But the celebration of the tacky Christmas sweater is a recent phenomenon, traceable in part to the 1989 classic, National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation," in which heavily sweatered Clark Griswold was the butt of the joke.

But not everyone's laughing. Kent resident Anne Dillon, who read about the contest, says such sweater-ridicule has dampened her holiday spirit.

"All these years I thought I looked very spiffy and festive, and I am now told I've looked tacky and have no taste."

Others don't mind the jokes. Contestant Judy Lowell, an Everett teacher pictured here, paid a lot of money at a boutique for her neon-green, appliquéd sweater. She loves it.

"I could see myself as being the crazy grandmother who wore this sweater every year," she said.

If this year's sweater-buying traffic is any indication, shoppers might want to get a head start on Christmas 2008.

"I would say we've put out about 200 this season," says Carrie Beck, who works at the Crown Hill Value Village. "The second we put one on a rack it goes out the door."

So in honor of Clark Griswolds everywhere, we bring you the best of the worst holiday sweaters, 2007.