JOANNE watkinson
CALL me Scrooge but the Christmas Jumper Day thing gets my goat. All this talk of buying clothes more mindfully and sending less to landfill, then we all head out and buy an acrylic, Christmasthemed knit that will take years to biodegrade, and wear it just once. Before you start on me for being uncharitable, hear me out.
Christmas Jumper Day started back in 2012 when Save the Children launched its appeal to raise money and awareness of its fantastic charity.
The deal was that participants donated a minimum of £2 in exchange for wearing a novelty jumper for the day. But herein lies my issue: How many people actually remember to donate to Save the Children when they join in their work place Christmas Jumper Day?
Is it possible that the fundraising message has been lost along the way and some people are unaware of the day’s charitable beginnings?
The real winners on Christmas Jumper Day are the shops. Every supermarket and high street store gets in on the act. And it’s not just them, for £890 you can get an intarsia knitted reindeer sweater from
Gucci. My question is – if we are paying circa £20 for a Christmas jumper, but only £2 to Save the Children, how can that make sense?
I wonder how many people wear the same jumper as last year? I read a statistic that one in four Christmas jumpers are thrown away each year unworn.
My kids do that expensive thing all kids do – grow. So every year I find myself begrudgingly buying two wasteful elf/ Santa’s helpers jumpers having passed last year’s perfectbut-too-small versions on to those with smaller children, and I wondered why, in the name of sustainability, adults don’t do the same thing?
Well, it turns out you can. The Final Straw Solent.org encourages people to plan a ‘swap shop’ where they can donate their pre-loved/ worn once Christmas jumpers and take home a new one. Or perhaps we could head to re-sale sites such as De-pop or E-bay and bag a bargain jumper and donate the difference to Save the Children? A sustainable way to do Christmas Jumper Day.
By the way, Sainsburys donates 25% of the sale price of its Gruffalo Christmas jumper to Save the Children. See Savethechildren.org.uk