Holiday sweaters are the butt of many a joke, but a pub owner in England is taking them quite seriously.
Alan Murphy, who owns three establishments in the town Kingston upon Hull, has made it an official policy that customers are not allowed to wear "fancy dress." And among the banned items are "Christmas jumpers," a British term for sweaters with reindeer, Santas, and other festive themes.
His reasoning isn't easy to grasp at first. "We are a small pub and we cannot accommodate large groups," he told the Hull Daily Mail.
Apparently, people in Christmas garb flock together. Perhaps Murphy has unwillingly become the host of too many an ugly sweater contest.
He's clearly very strict about this rule. "We have spent a fortune making this place nice and we feel we need this dress code, much in the same way some upmarket restaurants won't allow sportswear," he said. "We don't want to attract stag dos and large office parties in a place which only has room for 70 people. We don't want 15 lads all dressed in Christmas jumpers making a beeline for the bar and making life difficult for others."
He thanks he's done a very good thing for the world, or at least for his customers. "At the end of the day lots of our regulars say it's fantastic what we are doing," he said, describing the ambiance he creates as "a candlelit pub full of couples and older people."
Fortunately, plenty of bars will still be welcoming this classic holiday staple, so we'll have a chance to show off our Whoopi Goldberg knits and Beyoncé "I sleigh all day" sweaters.
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