We had our first Christmas party of the season this past weekend, the theme: Ugly Holiday Sweaters.
The only surviving photo
There were quite a few beauties among the bunch. We somehow managed to neglect to take any photographs but reach into your imagination and entertain this description. I wore a bright green turtle neck sticking out from beneath a bulky Rorschach test type sweater which displayed a different image for each viewer. I sported a hairdo straight from the 50’s with a drastic off-set part with hair pulled away like opposing magnets. My wife wore a hand-made sweater featuring a proud 8-bit skier inviting the observer to join him on his 8-bit snow-covered mountain. She also sported jingle bell earrings and a glittery bright head band. In addition there were Christmas bear sweaters, men squeezed into women’s sweaters (complete with shoulder pads), brightly colored infants hats, and baby clothes pulled out of old trunks in the attic.
The majority of the party guests amused themselves in the basement, cycling between teams as part of an epic, and increasingly dysfunctional, flip-cup tournament. While others amused themselves around the food table, gawking at the impressive trifle prepared by a direct relative of Martha Stewart (my wife, not really related) and watching as unsuspecting guests grab a handful of peanut M&M’s that some clever individual had replaced all the green ones with wasabi peanuts (for the record I did wash my hands before making the switch). It is amazing to see the number of people who, despite noticing the obvious visual and textural abnormality, still decide to eat the peanut. The look on their face the moment they realize the mistake is priceless, and fortunately the wasabi peanuts in the bulk food section at Wegman’s are fairly mild and easy to handle, unless of course you are expecting milk chocolate.
