Schools - Christmas jumper day - wear an Xmas jumper and raise £1 for charity

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Aibu to be aggravated with notices from two different schools about Xmas jumper day. I would have to buy two Xmas jumpers in order to send in £1 for charity.

It would cost about £40 to send them in with Xmas jumpers and pay the £1 for the privilege.

AIBU to think it’s a tone deaf request from school when people are under pressure with the inflated cost of living?

Charity shop?
Vinted?

Eh?
Have you heard of washing machines?

Our school does this as part of our school uniform shop. All sorts of Christmas jumpers on the rail now and it's help yourself and make a donation (donations can be cash or into the bank account online so know one knows if you pay or not if you can't afford to)

The other thing you can do is ask on a local FB page (or just to friends) to see if anyone has one you can borrow. Chances are there are people who have ones at home that are grown out of. People do that where I live.

Yes, it was a real pain when Christmas jumpers were a new thing. We stuck stickers on an existing top (usually drawings on sticky white address labels, like Santa hats or snowmen). It seems ridiculous to spend money on a novelty in order to donate a comparitively much smaller amount to charity. Now it's a bit easier as there are so many about secondhand. My kids have largely stopped growing and both have nordic-style pattern jumpers that they wear regularly in colder weather and which also seem to tick a "Christmas jumper" box when needed.

Can I add yellow clothing, charity event t-shirts (CIN being the most egregious), wearing nightwear to school and mis-matched socks to the bonfire of primary school charity fundraising efforts?

Asda have jumpers for £10 or look in charity shops.

It's been the norm for at least 20 years to do this and the price hasn't increased

Why £40?

Ask around. We often shared jumpers with cousins, got a second hand or Primark.

I'm a retired secondary school teacher.

I loathed all fundraising activities, whether end of term or otherwise. For the last 18 years of my career, I was a middle manager in a school where the catchment had "multiple indicators of deprivation".

Our last HT purported to be very religious and was rather performative - always looking to get the school into the local press for its charitable endeavours.

I recall seeing him haranguing pupils at assembly for failing to get enough sponsors from family and friends for an indoor rowing event for charity. We had to remind him that there was a reason why our previous HT had specifically selected a uniform which merely asked that parents dress their children in black and white.

One time, he demanded that children bring in cans of food to be donated to the elderly.

His cunning plan was to donate all the food to the local privately run old folks' home. God bless her, our Head Girl apparently told him that this was a mad idea - the school would simply be subsidising the owners who were already making a mint out of their clientele.

He persisted in his plan, however, but altered it to a donation of food to pensioners in a sheltered housing complex. He didn't get in enough donations. He'd already contacted the press.

In order to save face, he sent a couple of members of the office staff out to the local supermarket to buy more cans using the school fund.

Normal jumper, sticky backed star stickers. Not perfect, but doesn't have to be. Child (now 22) normally went round giving everyone a gold star, sometimes even had some left by the end of the day... 😆 Same jumper with dot stickers for children in need etc.

It is the sense of belonging in an event and the pound for charity (if you can afford it) that count really. Some people will go expensive, some supermarket, some homemade and others will "forget" .

Seems ridiculous. I'd buy a couple of cheap Christmassy badges and pin one on a regular jumper they already own. That way you can reuse it every year as they grow.

Eh?! If you're that neurotic, you don't actually know where new stuff has 'been' either!!

Posts like this make me so grateful our school (very mixed catchment) is sensible about this sort of thing. We have ‘winter jumper day’ instead so kids can wear any old jumper and there’s genuinely no expectation of donating money. The PTA also has Christmas jumpers in the uniform swap shop (which is made available free - donations optional).

This. While parents continue to comply with this nonsense, then why would anything change? By all means do the charity side of things, but the children should be encouraged to just add a bit of sparkle to their normal clothes, such as a bit of tinsel around their wrists, in their hair, sparkly nail varnish etc.

We've been running a donation only / Christmas jumper swap as part of the PTA thrift shop. It means that jumpers are reused without people having to spend money, and those who can, donate a wee bit to the PTA, which then gets spent on stuff for the school.
We also gave unwanted jumpers into the school office to pass to families they know are struggling.

I always bought DD's in charity shops. They are usually in excellent condition as they have only been worn a couple of times. Last one cost me £2 and she wore it 3 years in a row.

So it doesn't have to cost you £40. at all.

Our local primary also sells Christmas jumpers second hand, so perhaps you could suggest that at your primary or help set it up. The school makes a bit more money and people get cheap jumpers.

Christmas jumpers are like a hand-me-down waterfall for the kids in my family. Once they've been worn by all three of my boys then they are passed down to cousins.

I hated this nonsense. And I didn’t have time to traipse through multiple charity shops in the hopes of finding something suitable in the right size.
It’s all completely unnecessary hassle.

Yeah Christmas is unnecessary hassle!

It is supposed to be fun for the kids… so either they have a Christmas jumper they want to wear or they can take any jumper they own and customise it - anything from basic stickers to needlework. At least this is what they do at my DC’s school.

I used to just use a random red or green shirt. Some years I would buy a primary level shirt with a cute Christmas graphic. Dc would love wearing it on weekends and on Christmas Day. I never bothered with a proper jumper because they grow too fast.

only now that dc has stopped growing do we invest in more expensive things like Christmas jumpers because we know they can be used year to year.

Two jumpers when they are small men’s and ladies’ are likely to be £17 each plus a couple of quid for the charity.

If you don't want to look on FB marketplace, where they're traded or sold for a few pounds a pop, your child can pin a hand drawn Christmas tree/snowflake to his top. Or wrap some tinsel around his neck like a scarf. Sorted.

To be fair, the bar for participating in Christmas festivities at school has gone into overdrive. Christmas play, Christmas Jumper day, Christmas party, Christmas raffle, Christmas movie night, Christmas choir, Christmas fair all with a bring this thing, wear that thing, take this much money.

I'm sure the teachers are even more knackered that the parents but it makes everything unnecessarily difficult. If we could just go back to having toy day on the last day of term then I'm sure everyone would heave a sigh of relief at the festive de-escalation.

I didn't buy a Christmas jumper for DDs until they had stopped growing. We all have Christmas jumpers but put them away with the decorations and get them out again with the advent calendars. They also borrow mine and I borrow theirs. The oldest one (mine) is about 12 years old and none have been passed on or thrown away.

Agreed. It doesn’t help that Ofsted expect schools to raise money for charity. This is needless crap. Parents pay taxes and pay enough to the government. They shouldn’t be coerced to give £1 for dress down days and do all of these yellow days for mental health etc. Speaking as a single parent who is working full time, with SEN kids, I have enough shit to do without this.. and kids who don’t want to be the odd one out.