Deck the malls with gals so gaudy

No doubt it started innocently enough, probably during the Renaissance when some overworked seamstress with dreams of egalitarianism looked up from the robes she was embroidering for the local nobleman and thought, “If His Royal Humphety-humph can wear stars and angels on his clothes at yuletide, why can’t I?”

And so the holiday sweater was born.

Three minutes after the Thanksgiving leftovers are put away, the stores are full of sweaters festively aglitter with images of the season: applique Christmas trees with real ornaments, glitter-dust snowmen and boiled-wool teddy bears, bangle rocking horses and jingle bells that ring at the slightest movement. Some of them glow in the dark, some of them chirp electric carols, some of them have their own blinking lights.

It’s full-frontal revelry, the holiday spirit in S, M, L and XL brought to you directly from Santa’s Village. Via Las Vegas.

It is important to note that these sweaters are almost totally confined to one department. Oh, men may find the occasional Santa hat-and-matching-boxer set under the tree or delight in the blinking red nose on their Rudolph holiday tie, but the heavy artillery, the red cardigans with nutcrackers as tall as a 5-year-old, are reserved for the ladies. More specifically, the mommies and the grandmommies.

“Little kids love them,” says Kate Rice, a style consultant for Mervyns. “And moms will do anything for their kids at Christmas.”

Most of us remember a maternal holiday sweater or, more probably, hostess apron, from our childhoods, but if it seems like things have gotten a tad out of control lately, well, they are. Mervyns alone offers about a dozen styles of holiday novelty sweaters this year and, according to Rice, the styles are growing in number and gaudiness.

“They are getting more and more over the top,” she says. “It used to be a snowflake design or maybe a little tree, but now it’s snowmen all over the place and a trimmed Christmas tree down the front.”

Novelty of all types is a growth industry, she says, and while there are still plenty of women who haul out the same sweater year after year, more are buying new every season.

“I think now you have people who collect them and so every year their families are waiting to see what The Sweater will look like this time,” she says. “There’s a real kitsch factor.”

At the other end of the mall, Nordstrom sees some of the same trends, although at $40 to $100 a pop, their demographic is slightly different from Mervyns. A call to the store in South Coast Plaza, surely the local cradle of sequinization, is routed up through the Seattle headquarters, where Deniz Angers says the store carries a whopping 40 variations on The Sweater. Tassels and 3-D elements -- protruding reindeer noses, fuzzy teddy bears -- are popular this year, she says, and royal blue is the new red.

Although the glittery sweater may now seem a requisite concession of motherhood, there are still plenty of women who balk, who stare down those sequined nutcrackers and Santas and head over to the claret sweater sets.

“People are very opinionated about The Sweater,” says Rice. “They love them or they hate them.”

Mercifully, there does not, however, appear to be a holiday sweater gene. “My mother loves them,” she says. “My grandmother? Never in a million years.”