Christmas Jumper Day

What the day is

Christmas Jumper Day is a United Kingdom fundraising campaign run by Save the Children, held on a Friday in December, so the date moves from year to year. People wear a festive jumper to work or school and donate.

Origin and background

The charity launched it in 2012, and the design of the thing is clever. It asks for a very small donation and an action people were half inclined to take anyway, which removes the two usual obstacles to fundraising: cost and effort. Schools and offices adopted it quickly because it needs no organizing beyond an announcement.

The garment had already completed a journey from sincere to ironic and back. Novelty knitwear was ordinary television-presenter wear in the 1970s and 1980s and became shorthand for unfashionable relatives. The ironic revival is often traced to a reindeer jumper worn in a film at the turn of the millennium, after which wearing one badly became the point. Enough people now own one sincerely that the irony has worn off again.

There is a real complication the charity itself has acknowledged. Surveys of the British market found that a large majority of Christmas jumpers are made wholly or mostly from acrylic, which is a plastic fiber that sheds microplastics in the wash, and that a great many are worn once and discarded. A garment bought to raise a pound for charity and thrown away in January is not a good trade, and campaigns now push re-wearing, swapping and second-hand purchases instead.

How to take part

• Wear one you already own. The fundraiser does not require a new purchase.
• Donate directly to the charity, which matters more than the jumper.
• Buy second-hand if you need one. Charity shops are full of them by December.
• Look for wool or cotton rather than acrylic if you are buying new.
• Organize a swap at work, which costs nothing and produces more variety.