Fashionistas, stop damaging the environment – a Christmas jumper is not just for one year

ILOVE Christmas. I love the heady scent of real trees and tinsel that takes over the house. I love the jingle-laden ads and the wall-to-wall classic movies. love the impromptu gatherings and the inevitable panic-buying of gifts on Christmas eve. I especially love the freezer aisles stocked full of perfectly formed party food (mini pork-belly skewer, anyone?).

The one thing I am not a fan of is the ‘Christmas Jumper’.

I bought one myself a few years ago, just before the craze went full mainstream (which I deem to be the year my dad came home wearing one).

But since that original purchase I have given them a wide berth, partly because my simplistic, Rudolph-adorned sweater just doesn’t cut it anymore.

These days it’s not considered a real Christmas jumper unless it has lights, moveable parts and tinseladorned appendages that drunk people can try to swing off at 3am.

But rather than feeling all bah-humbug about my one Christmas blindspot, I can now give myself a self-congratulatory pat on the back. Environmentalists this week issued a plea to people to consider re-wearing their Christmas sweaters each year instead of buying a new one.

Apparently one-in-four of us is so horrified at the prospect of (gasp!) being seen in the same one next year that, come January, thousands are just tossed in the bin, and at a massive cost to the environment.

So all you festive fashionistas take note: these jumpers are for life and not just, well, Christmas.

Photo: Getty An employee at Madame Tussauds in London takes a selfie with wax figures depicting Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, left, and Prime Minister Theresa May wearing a Christmas jumper.