Have a holly jolly Wear A Christmas Hat Day

‘Tis the season to help find a cure and, with just under two weeks to go until Wear A Christmas Hat Day on Friday 16^th December, we’ve compiled a stocking-full of ways you can get involved.

It’s a great occasion to bring your family, friends, neighbours, community and beyond together to really raise the festive feeling. That’s what Beth Harris did last year. Her hattastic plans kicked off at Penybanc RFC where the team took the pitch in their hats and ‘painted the field pink’. There was a raffle at the leisure centre and locals were encouraged to don their Christmas hat and donate £5.

Celebrating with your community is a wonderful way to get everyone in the mood for Christmas and raise vital funds to help find a cure. Dress up in your best garbs and don your favourite Christmas hats. Ask everyone to make a donation to attend. Hold a raffle or auction with prizes donated by local businesses to boost your fundraising total. Put together a sparkly selfie booth with Christmas hat props and ask your partygoers to share their photos on social media using #WearAChristmasHatDay – pop a collection box in there too so people can donate any spare cash on the night.

Not sure if you can encourage lots of people to join your fundraising event? Why not set yourself a challenge and ask for donations to support you. Grandmother Joan Ramsay turned her love of running into vital funds and encouraged more than 50 members of her running club to join her for a Christmas canal run, paying a £2 donation to join in.

It’s not just Santa runs which prove popular fundraisers. You can turn any activity into vital funds for Brain Tumour Research. Brave the waves for a sponsored dip in the sea. Grab your woolly hats for a winter walk. Ask your sports club or exercise class to get all members to wear their hats for their session on Friday 16^th December and donate what they can to the pot. Or get on your bike like Cerian Llewellyn who, along with family and friends, pedalled 14 miles in memory of her beloved husband Gwilym – an amazing celebration of his love of cycling.

Wear A Christmas Hat Day is the perfect celebration to add extra sparkle to your end-of-term activities and your event can be as simple as asking pupils to wear their festive headgear to school and donate a couple of pounds. At Aldenham School, students and teachers wore their hats for their end-of-term Christmas lunch, but you don’t have to put on a full spread either – bake sales always go down a tasty treat.

Or get students’ creative juices flowing and ask them to make their own headgear and put on a fashionable ‘hatwalk’ like students at St Joseph’s Catholic and Anglican High School. They added to the fun by including a ‘hat character’ quiz and a ‘mad hatters’ bake sale.

We know lots of workplaces look for different ways to bring colleagues together at Christmas so why not plan a hattastic celebration, raise the team spirit and support a vital cause whilst doing so?

From hatty parties to team building hat-tivities, there are lots of ways to get involved. Ask your co-workers to bring in their baby photos and play ‘guess the angel’. Build a hat obstacle course and the fastest team wins a prize. Get colleagues to put on their detective hats and create an office scavenger hunt. Or you could keep it simple yet effective like Wendy Lambourne, who asked her colleagues at Kent Magistrates’ Court to don silly hats and make a donation in exchange for joining the festivities.

From jolly jogs to fashionable fundraisers, there’s an abundance of ways you can get involved at work, school, in your community – wherever you are – have fun and raise vital funds to help find a cure for all types of brain tumours. It’s time to put your Christmas thinking caps on and start planning your yule-cool event.

Wear A Christmas Hat Day takes place on Friday 16^th December, or you can choose any day in December that suits you. Register online via www.wearachristmashatday.org to access your free downloadable fundraising pack.