I won’t be seen dead in a uni Christmas jumper this week

‘Our Sheffield’ and the Village Store in Endcliffe have been stocking four equally unappealing colours of Christmas jumper at 12 pounds each this month, playing to the insatiable love of branded uni stash that some of us still seem to nurture.

Lets just take a second to appreciate we’re in higher education, not nine year old’s at a One Direction concert. Yet these jumpers seem to be emptying GENIUS accounts by the second.

Grey? Why?

Young and naive, freshers love the stash more than anyone and it showed at The Edge Christmas meal on Thursday night – there were uni Christmas jumpers all over the place; you couldn’t look five yards without seeing one.

Amongst the relentless kazoo noise, the crap jokes and rancid brandy sauce, the fact that everyone was in a Christmas jumper could have been fairly pleasant – if it wasn’t for two major factors haunting me.

I mean don’t get me wrong, aesthetically, they’re not much short of an abomination.  The designs are reminiscent of Microsoft Clip Art 1996 and the cheap sweatshirt material would be more appropriate on a building site, accompanied with a high-vis jacket and cut off shorts. Even Primarni are doing actual woollen knitwear for under a tenner, come on.

Unimpressed

As if the colour schemes weren’t enough, the majority of jumpers on show are quite literally walking, talking adverts for the Uni – should we pay 12 quid to be an advert? I’m not so sure, especially when it’s so horrifically placed.

With Christmas, comes advent calendars, turkey, Christmas pudding, and more. There is not a single Christmas food I can think of that is good for your waistband. With all of this lovely salt and fat comes the inevitable Christmas belly.

With this inevitability in mind, the fountain of knowledge that is the marketing department have decided to brand these jumpers in the most strategic and sensitive way possible – by having the unnecessary ‘University of Sheffield’ script sprawled right across the tummy, drawing eyes to the one body part you wished wasn’t so obvious at this time of year.

Is it all a joke? Are the big shots all sat cackling at our misfortune in some dark corner of the SU?

Guilty

The ideal image of Christmas is happiness, peace, and giving. In reality, it’s actually being slightly unhappy with your presents, drunk squabbles, and rain. Clearly, these grim uni jumpers fit nicely into the latter feeling.

With tonnes of horrendous uni merchandise already on offer, gilets, joggers and pyjamas to name a few, was there really any need to exploit Christmas for some more? Probably not.