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Boden is the grown-up option. If your objection to Christmas jumpers is that they are badly made nylon things that bobble by the 27th, this is the retailer that answers it – the festive knits here are proper jumpers with a bit of wool in them that happen to have a reindeer on the front.
What Boden does particularly well is colour. Where most festive knitwear is red, green or navy, Boden will put a Fair Isle in pink and ochre and make it look entirely deliberate, and their children’s range is one of the most cheerful things in this whole trade. The cut is also more generous and better shaped than the novelty rail, which matters if you intend to wear the thing to anything other than a party.
It costs more and there is no point pretending otherwise. The argument for paying it is that these are the festive jumpers people still have five years later – a wool-blend Fair Isle washed carefully will outlast four acrylic novelty knits. Watch for the seasonal sales, which are worth waiting for if you can hold your nerve past mid-December.