Should “Christmas Jumper Day” be consigned to the charity bin? A coercive display of public charity, or a harmless bit of fun?

Despite Christmas jumpers’ fashion moment having long since passed, it has become something of an annual tradition in offices and schools across the country to take part in Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day, with the aim of “making the world better with a sweater.”

Each year, as I find myself tutting and sweating as I search for a suitably non-festive jumper to wear – because it’s cold you understand, not because a charity told me to wear one – I sigh that if only it were that simple. And each year, I grow more and more annoyed that my half-arsed attempts at subtly avoiding this growing “tradition” are met with cries of “WHERE”S YOUR CHRISTMAS JUMPER?” as soon as I take my coat off.

Yesterday, as I washed and hung out my daughter’s reindeer sweater, and this morning as I coerced Jonah into at least wearing something red (he doesn’t DO dressing up as a rule) and furnished them with with a pound from the emergency pot to give to their teachers (though I suspect Jonah’s will be spent on Match Attacks), I found myself grating at the illogicality of it all, given Ava’s sweater had cost nearly £20 from H & M. If I really wanted to save the children, (I do, I do) I probably would be taking more of a stand on child labour in the fashion industry.  But I, like the rest of the west’s hypocrites, like to have nice stuff as long as I shut my eyes and block my ears to how it’s being made.

In the end, I went into work wearing wool, so I could at least not feel anti-social when the office socialiser comes round with a jingling pot. I do understand the general sense of goodwill at a time of social excess, but the feeling I’m left with is more itchy than warm and fuzzy.

Like poppy wearing, the practice of making a visible statement of a charitable donation can become like a vice of collective guilt sweeping across the nation. And it bothers me. For a start, I think charity is an inefficient way of providing aid and it would be much better organised by the state (if it weren’t so fucking awful at spending the nation’s finances in the first place. But that’s a whole other problem)

But also because I’m a firm believer in the Victorian adage that charity, if you’re going to do it at all, begins at home. It’s not without a trace of irony that an indebted nation is required to dig deep into their credit cards to fund, not only their own festive indulgences but make the world a better place at the same time, when clearly, sporting a sweater isn’t going to do much but salve their own guilt at the amount of money they’ve splashed on stuff that’s probably not much wanted by the hapless recipient.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m more than happy to give my a bit of time where I feel it will benefit my local community – I decorated the christmas grotto at the local school one year with nothing much more than sticky back plastic, glitter and an iron will, and have happily baked, and decorated gingerbreads, and all that sort of middle-class mumsy do-gooder malarkey that you are guilted into at school. But as my time grows more and more precious, and I don’t want to spend my weekends up to my elbows in value flour, I can’t help feeling that there must be a more efficient way to make the world better than buying mawkish charity singles or spending a tenner on a sweater (made, I suspect in inhumane, by western standards, conditions) that you’ll de-mothball out once a year to put a couple of quid in a charity pot.

In the same way I can understand Jonah’s nothing-if-not-logical objections to packing pensioners bags at Iceland for his Scouting “community helper badge” too – surely it would be better if Tom just asked his company to donate as part of their corporate social responsibility program (or whatever big business calls its conscience these days). But even it – a City-based moneymaker – will only match a donation made by the individual from running round the park or otherwise making a patsy out of themselves for charity. In a globalised world, individual giving feels increasingly like a sticking plaster for corporate social irresponsibility or the government policy that props it up.

So, it annoyed me that I was labelled a Scrooge for the second time this week (the first was for daring to suggest to a bouncy ex-public schooler in a position of relative power that some members of staff – the ones with kids, for instance, or the interns – might not be so on board for Secret Santa as others. No one’s forcing you, she spat back)  for not having hung out my charitable giving to dry in public, so to speak. (As it happens I have already made a private donation to a homeless charity as I have a passing relationship with a tramp who makes rather a decent living, it appears, from hanging outside Bethnal Green Station in all weathers to the detriment of his health, and surprising generosity of passers by.)

I deigned to wear the Scrooge sticker that was printed off for me in jest, and no doubt I will cough up the necessary financial penalty for the privilege. And, given this is the first year that I can even afford to give my kids a nice Christmas, let alone consider anyone elses’, I wonder how many other people at my middle-class London-based workplace are also struggling to pay their own costs at this time of year, let alone those on zero hours contracts who are relying on food banks to top up their income. But as hypocrisies go during this annual retail orgy in celebration of a bloke who advocated embracing poverty as a way of life, perhaps it’s not so bad after all.