Average Teacher To Receive 37 Scented Candles From Students This Year

TEACHERS across the country are bracing themselves for a flood of scented candles as school terms draw to a close and parents rush to make sure their child isn’t the only kid who doesn’t bring in a gift to their school.

The giving of gifts to teachers can be traced to a Dublin school in the early 2000’s, when one 8-year-old brought a box of Milk Tray into his 2nd class teacher.

After every child in the classroom went home and told their parents, the same teacher received dozens of boxes of Milk Tray the following year, as parents feared that their kid may not get as much education if they were the one child who didn’t give anything to the teacher at Christmas.

This soon spread to the whole school, and then to schools in the surrounding area before becoming a countrywide epidemic. Statistics show that parents are more likely to buy a scented candle for their kids’ teacher, as it is a relatively universal gift that requires little or no actual thought.

“What was once a kind gesture is now a mandatory part of the education system, ” said Hillary Martin, spokesperson for the Irish Teachers Association.

“All parents are duty-bound to give a gift valued at no less than €20 to their kids’ teacher, regardless of how that teacher is performing in their job. Yankee Candles are the most common, and teachers receive more of these than they could possibly burn in a year. They just pile up. On average, teachers have more candles in their house than the nearest cathedral”.

Meanwhile, experts in the art of cop-on have suggested that the phenomenon of giving gifts to teachers could be eradicated if parents would just agree that the whole thing was nonsense and that there’s enough to be worried about at Christmas without fretting that your child is going to be singled out for a year if they don’t buy their teacher a candle that smells like washing powder.