Twenty years ago this Christmas season, two university students tried on matching penguin sweaters in a Coquitlam, B.C., mall and exchanged glances.
Thus was a legend born.
"We put them on and we died laughing," says Jordan Birch, one of the B.C. men universally acknowledged as the founders of the ugly Christmas sweater phenomenon, after they organized a themed party at a friend's house in the Metro Vancouver city.
"Of course, the word 'ugly' and pairing that with Christmas sweater wasn't common verbiage [at the time]. It was just the most jovial, ridiculous, silly party that we could imagine and it just snowballed from there."
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