About those ugly Christmas sweaters...

... an update

Last year, I posted a little rant about ugly Christmas sweaters. I think it’s worth sharing this again since I have an update and maybe you missed it at the time. Or maybe your forgot the entire thing, I wouldn’t hold it against you.

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Yesterday, I received a message from my son’s school, with all the fun activities they will do for Christmas this year. There will be crafting, a musical, a dinner, drinks for the parents, a raffle and next Friday (that would be in four days) the kids can wear their ugly Christmas sweater to school!

It sounds fun, doesn’t it? Who wants to be the party pooper that gets mad about this?

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I also sent an email to the school asking if we can collect the sweaters in order to reuse them next year. If your school has an Ugly Christmas Sweater day, feel free to use this as a template.

Thank you for organising fun activities around the Christmas Holidays for the kids and parents.

I would like to share some thoughts on the ugly Christmas sweaters. While I appreciate this as a fun thing for the kids and I understand that the school staff has a lot on their minds, especially around this time, I think some consequences may have been overlooked.

When you’re asking parents to buy a sweater, during an already expensive time, many parents will not want their child to feel left out and therefore buy a sweater that’s affordable to them. Those sweaters are most often made under appalling conditions and shipped across the globe. Our children will then wear them for a few days at most. Next year, the sweaters will be too small and thrift stores don't take them when they’re out of season. If they’re put in a donation bin, there is a good chance that they will end up on a waste pile, where the acrylic yarn will either sit forever or be burned causing air pollution.

I know that the above doesn’t sound fun at all. Luckily I have some ideas as well. We could collect the sweaters as a school and put them up for sale for Christmas next year (maybe for a good cause?) In addition, next year, as part of the crafting activities, we could turn regular old sweaters into ugly Christmas sweaters.

I would love to hear what your thoughts are on this. Of course I am available to help collect sweaters.

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So that was the post, here’s the update. This week, we’re having an Ugly Christmas sweaters sale at school! A few dozen sweaters were donated, the sweaters are only five bucks each, so that’s nice for anyone with a smaller budget and all proceeds go to a good cause.

More importantly, the school wants to expand this idea to other seasonal clothing. It’s really not about those few sweaters, it’s about raising awareness and changing our mindset.

All of this to say, you can do fun stuff while also being mindful of the environment. If you want to buy an ugly Christmas sweater, see if you can get it second hand. And if you need to get rid of it, do it so that others can still enjoy it!

Merry Christmas to you!

With love,