The hills are alive on this year’s ugly holiday sweater from Microsoft.
Throwing things back to the early 2000s, the tech giant’s latest soft-wear features “Bliss,” the default desktop image in the time of Windows XP. The famous image is a real photograph of a rolling green hill and blue sky with white clouds in Sonoma County, Calif.
Microsoft has been rolling out versions of the nostalgic sweaters for several years, to the delight of those who prefer a little tech geek with their holiday chic.
The sweaters will be printed in limited quantities and available for purchase starting Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. PT.
This year, Windows sweater sales are supporting the environmental organization The Nature Conservancy. Microsoft will contribute $100,000 of sweater proceeds to the group.
To kick off the ugly sweater campaign, Windows will be hosting a Sweaterathon event on Instagram and Tik Tok on Tuesday from 9-10 a.m. PT. The event — complete with Bliss backdrop — will feature Windows-specific trivia, among other entertainment.
The story of the Bliss hillside location in wine country north of San Francisco has been told previously in the years since XP was released in October 2001 and retired in 2014. Onetime National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear stopped on a drive along a two-lane roadway to snap the green hillside back in 1996.
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