To object to Christmas jumper day?

[Drummingisfun]

DS school have already put on the calendar that they are doing Christmas jumper day, for a £1 donation to save the children.

AIBU to feel uncomfortable about it?
I am not just being a scrooge, I don't object to most festive activities but:
1)parents on a very low income are out under pressure to buy and jumper and also contribute £1. Note that there are THREE OTHER non uniform days scheduled before this also with a £1 donation.

2. It means people buying jumpers which will barely be worn, which is terrible for the environment. Bad if they are made of nylon/acrylic/polyester as all plastics, bad if made from cheap unsustainable cotton due to massive water consumption and pollution by factories. Anyone who watched the recent Stacey Dooley documentary will know what I'm talking about.

3. the irony of donating the money to save the children when most people will have bought their child the cheapest jumper they can find for a couple of quid, meaning that children are likely to have been harmed at some stage in the production either by sweatshop labour, massive unsustainable farming, factories polluting their living environment and water source...

AIBU? I love Christmas but I just feel that school shouldn't be promoting pointless consumerism like this.

Red or green jumper with old tinsel, nothing more. Or anything that isn't school uniform tbh. And no child is ever penalised for not bringing in the £1!

I agree with you OP, on all points. This sounds 'enforced' and I too would rather give my donation directly and not have to wear jumpers made in sweat-shops from countries with barely-there human rights.

I'd prefer it if schools wanting to participate in this would at least promote 'wearing a favourite jumper' that you already own so that more of these don't pointlessly need to be made.

Could you ask the school to sort out a jumper donation box in reception for those that have been grown out of and can them be passed onto those without for a domatiom tp the charity rather than parents having to go buy a new one full price?

pollymere the DC's school specify proper Christmas jumpers, or their parents will be called to bring in uniform.

That's disgraceful, Philomena. I would complain if this nonsense became somehow 'mandated' in my child's school.

I completely agree. These pay a pound days used to really annoy me as they are effectively compulsory unless you want your child to be the odd one out as the only one in uniform and some parents are living hand to mouth and can’t afford £1 on multiple days for charity. Plus the cost of the uniform - not all of us have a network of mums for “swapsies” either. Demonstrates a completely lack of respect for parents and understanding of what life is like for people on the bread line.

I used to send my child in dressed up but not pay the money in the end. Still had to pay for the costume but it meant my child wasn’t singled out.

I'm diligently keeping every Christmas jumper my children have ever had to pass into my baby niece when she's older...ditto every dressing up costume. It's such a pain to spend money on things they wear for one day!

After the day why don’t you organise parents to donate the jumpers to be sold to the next year group for a small fee. Do this every year and you raise money while saving parents paying out a fortune and recycling!

Thankfully, our school doesn't do world book day or similar nonsense but they are far too obsessed with supporting our local GAA football team so when one of the many teams (girls/boys/different age groups) is in a final, they usually have a 'wear GAA footy theme' or similar.
This coming week we have wear blue and white GAA theme on a Wednesday followed by wear Halloween costumes on Thursday.
School's closed on Friday for the referendum, so it's a shorter week.

Lying I don't complain because I buy them Christmas jumpers a size bigger online as soon as it gets cold enough to wear them every other year, and they wear them all year. My aunt gave me a lecture last year about wasting money and I could have put a Christmas brooch on an ordinary jumper, but their jumpers were too small, and I'd have had to fork out for new jumpers and Christmas brooches. She tried to say that if I hadn't bought the jumpers I wouldn't be struggling to pay the phone bill. No, and they'd have been freezing, and someone would probably have called SS.

A total non issue. Pin a price of tinsel to a normal jumper. We’ve always done this and we have had a load of fun doing it.

Then you must feel the same about Halloween no?

No. There are no 'wear a Hallowe'en jumper' days at school. And, while there are plenty of disposible-fashion, sweatshop-made Hallowe'en costumes, there are many ways of dressing up for Hallowe'en. Not one 'Hallowe'en jumper' fabricated 'tradition'.

Dressing up for Hallowe'en and how one does it are entirely personal choices.

Where's the comparison?

I'm totally down on shoddy sweatshop Halloween costumes too, I'm an equal opportunities hater

The person who won the Christmas jumper competition at dh's workplace last year was someone who had tacked one of their dc's Christmas teddies onto their jumper along with a few bits of tinsel and various baubles. It looked fab! I also really dislike the Xmas jumper trend unless an adult has a nice one they rock each year in the manner of Mark Darcy at the turkey curry buffet

Where's the comparison?

Both dressing up for Halloween and Christmas jumpers are traditions that have exploded in the UK in the last few decades, resulting in a lot of virtually single-use plastic tat. They also both put a lot of pressure on families who think of £1 or 2 as a significant proportion of their income, and encourage expectations in chiildrrn, particularly when promoted by schools who children see as authority figures.

Dressing for Halloween is not new, but it used to be old sheets and black bin bags..

I don't see it. I've never heard of a school having a 'hallowe'en costume day'. Far less a 'hallowe'en jumper day'. That's what the OP's question is about - schools doing these things institutionally, as semi-compulsory activities.

The OP very clearly raises the issues of the environment and sweatshops too.

Yes, but Christmas jumpers are no different from any other jumper, and if they're the only non-school jumpers my DC own and they wear them for 2 years, whether they have reindeer or flowers on makes no difference to the environment.

I'm another one who hates them - not just for the environment issues now but for the message it gives kids about excessive consumption and a disposable life style

Don't even get me started on Halloween...

Our children are now HE so we have none of this rubbish anymore but our child's last half term had six dress up days.

For most people that meant six lots of plastic rubbish that was worn only once or twice.

It's not the Xmas jumpers themselves it's the whole thought pattern and set of assumptions behind them.

We all know these multiple dress up days are a very recent phenomenon- my kids dressed up once a year at most - I think my only time was the tee towel on the head nativity.

Oh, and Halloween costumes go in the dressing up basket and get worn just to play in for years. Every few years I have to weed out the ones they can't squeeze into anymore.

Do people remember the old Blue Peter Xmas appeals? They were all done so that every child could take part without any cost to the parents and involved collecting recyclables to be sold to raise money for charity whether it was bottle tops, used postage stamps etc. Shame schools don't work from the same premise

Ah well. I spotted that the OP's question was about whether schools should do this - hold an event, in school time, that prompts tens to hundreds of people to buy a cheap, environmentally-unfriendly, sweatshop-made jumpers, many of which will not be passed on or re-sold, because many people don't (however virtuous you, the indiviual poster, happens to be).

People talking about their own frugal habits, or their choice to dress their dcs for Hallowe'en out of school hours (succumbing to peer pressure perhaps, though many families don't but - significantly in terms of the question - not responding to any official request from a compulsorily-attended institution to do so), are resonding to a different question, which would be 'how would you, as an individual / family, respond to a school's request that dcs wear Christmas jumpers?' and 'How do you, as an individual / family, respond to the prominence of Hallowe'en and availability of cheap mass-produced costumes?'.

OP's question was about whether schools should do this, given the overall impact of their institutional choice to do so.

I see a big difference between that question, about institutional decision-making affecting many different people (their diverse economic status and values are relevant), and what a lot of people here are discussing; individual choices in a wider consumerist climate. That's why there isn't a direct comparison with Hallowe'en - unless schools are running official Hallowe'en dress-up days.

Hugely wasteful and ridiculous.

Christmas Jumper Day might be a "thing" but it really shouldn't be. Just another indication of the crazy rampant consumerism around Christmas. Hate it.

OP Christmas jumper is indicative of everything wrong with our society. We are shredding up the planet so we can have jumpers just to be worn for ONE day. It's disgusting and you should make a stand on principle no matter how much money you have. You can decorate a jumper but NEVER buy a jumper for a day. It sends a terrible message and has far reaching consequences.