Tesco Christmas card making fun of children with red hair

So glad someone raised this.

I heard the story on Radio 4 this morning in the what the papers say bit and the presenter laughed at the end as if it was a huge joke .

I was sitting on the bed with my gorgeous curly red haired ds - aged 8 - and he heard it and we had yet another conversation about why people think red hair is funny, with the added context of why people might think Santa wouldn't love you as much if you had red hair. It made me furious.

It might seem like a bit of fun, but the fact that society thinks it's OK to make pejorative jokes about red hair does, I believe, have an effect on children and the way their peers treat them. Age 6 my son asked if he could dye his hair and hoped that it would go brown (like daddy's) when he grows up. None of the rest of us have ginger hair but we constantly tell him how gorgeous and special he is (and believe me he is ) But things like this and the fact that adults think it's acceptable humour, give children license to be mean to other children, who have no choice about their hair colour - just as they don't have control over their skin colour. Thankfully we don't condone teasing about that.

Rant over.... as you were

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Tesco Christmas card making fun of children with red hair