Christmas Jumper Day is the one day of the year when wearing a reindeer with a flashing nose to work is not just tolerated but expected. Here is what it is, when it happens, where it came from, and how to take part without ending up as the only person in the office who dressed up.
What is Christmas Jumper Day?
Christmas Jumper Day is a UK fundraising event run by Save the Children. Schools, offices and workplaces pick a day in December, everyone wears a Christmas jumper, and each participant donates to the charity. It launched in 2012 and has since become a fixture of the British December calendar, with millions of people taking part each year.
The American equivalent is National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day, which is not tied to a single charity and is observed on the third Friday of December. The two traditions have largely merged online, and most jumpers on sale are designed for both.
When is it?
Save the Children sets the official date each year, and it usually falls on a Thursday or Friday in the second week of December. Because the date moves, check the charity’s site for the current year before you print anything or book anything.
In practice, most workplaces do not use the official date anyway. They attach it to whatever day the office Christmas party, team lunch or last day before the holidays happens to fall on. If you are organising, pick the day that already has people in the building.
Where the tradition came from
Christmas Jumper Day did not invent festive knitwear — it formalised something that had been building for a decade. The deliberate “wear the worst jumper you can find” party is usually traced to Vancouver in 2002, and film and television had been making the garment funny since the 1980s. What Save the Children added in 2012 was a date, a reason and permission. Once there was a charity attached, no HR department could object.
The full story of how the garment got from 1950s department stores to a national fundraising day is in our history of the ugly Christmas jumper.
How to organise it at work
Give three weeks’ notice, minimum
The single biggest failure mode is announcing it on the Monday for the Friday. Half the office will not have a jumper, will not have time to get one, and will spend the day apologising. Three weeks is enough for delivery and for people to actually enjoy choosing.
Set the categories in advance
A single “best jumper” prize produces one winner and forty people who feel they wasted their money. Four or five categories gets everyone involved. The ones that work reliably:
- Brightest — effectively the light-up category, and it will be won by whoever has the most LEDs.
- Best in show — the genuinely well-designed one.
- Worst in show — the point of the whole exercise.
- Best team effort — for departments who coordinate.
- Most inexplicable — for the jumper nobody can explain.
Handle the dress code question before someone asks
If your workplace has client meetings, say explicitly whether client-facing staff are exempt or expected to take part. Teams that meet customers usually want something that reads as festive rather than as fancy dress — a subtle knit or a smart pullover such as the quarter-zip knitted pullover works for people who need to stay presentable, while everyone else goes maximal.
Collect the money digitally
Nobody carries cash. Set up an online fundraising page, put the link in the calendar invite, and pin it in the team chat on the morning itself. You will roughly double what a collection tin raises.
What to wear
If you want to win
Lights win. They win every time, and they win harder in an office with overhead strip lighting that someone will eventually turn off. Reliable options include the JOYIN LED jumper with built-in bulbs, the BLACKBARK LED knitted pullover, and the HSCTEK light-up knitted crewneck. Check whether the battery pack detaches before you buy — the ones that do can go in the wash.
If you want to be comfortable
You are going to be in this for nine hours, including a warm office and possibly a pub. Printed sweatshirts are far more wearable than acrylic knit: the fleece-lined Arvilhill crewneck and the Hanes ugly Christmas sweatshirt both survive a full day without itching.
If your team is coordinating
Matching sets take the “best team effort” prize almost by default. Two-person and couples designs like the GRAJTCIN two-person jumper and the couples crewneck pair work for pairs; for a whole department, buying the same base design in different sizes reads better across a group photo than five different jumpers.
If you work in a mixed-faith office
An inclusive option matters more than people think, and there are good ones — the Chrismukkah interfaith jumper covers both bases and usually gets a bigger laugh than anything with a Santa on it.
Five things that always go wrong
- The batteries. Light-up jumpers ship with cells that are half-dead from sitting in a warehouse. Buy spares.
- The heating. Offices are warm and acrylic does not breathe. Wear a t-shirt underneath and expect to take it off by three.
- The video call. Somebody will have an external meeting they forgot about. Decide in advance whether that is a problem or the best part of the day.
- The slogan. Innuendo jumpers land very differently in a mixed team than they do in a pub. If you have to think about whether it is fine, it is not.
- The delivery date. The second week of December is the worst possible time to rely on postage. Order in November.