With six children who attend four different schools in the Philadelphia area, Dave Ogleton is all too familiar with demanding school emails ... which is why he created a laugh-out-loud viral video poking fun at them.
This video, inspired by the “humorous frustration” of parenting, illustrates the massive sprawl of oddly-specific school holiday celebrations. Ogleton, a full-time content creator known as @fitdadceo, claims that parents in the '90s would say, "I think all we have this month for the kids' school is the Christmas concert and Pajama Day next week."
He juxtaposes that casual sentence with a school's flurry of asks for today's parents.
"On top of this already being one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year," Ogleton pretends to read from a school email, "don't forget next week to dress your kid for Grinch Day, Reindeer Day after that, Polar Express Conductor Day and Candy Cane Hair Day the following day."
Does anyone even know what Candy Cane Hair Day means? Ogleton certainly doesn't.
In fact, Ogleton didn't even celebrate holidays as a child, but he always wanted to. "I was raised in a very different religion. I didn't celebrate any secular holidays," he tells TODAY.com.
Now that he's an adult, Ogleton says he "loves Christmas to an annoying level." But even so, he admits that certain people (and certain schools) even have him beat.
“Halloween starts soon as September hits,” he says. “Christmas starts as soon as someone even breathes Mariah Carey’s name.”
As you might imagine, it’s a huge challenge for Ogleton and his fiancée, Jackie, to keep school and extracurricular schedules straight for Ogleton's six kids: Sadie (15), Maddox (12), Sophie (9), Millie (6), Aria (4) and Preston (almost 3).
Even though Ogleton pokes fun at the 18 million holiday celebrations at school, he doesn't want to miss a single one of them. In fact, he rescheduled an entire trip to Disney World with his family so they could attend his daughter's preschool holiday concert.
In his video, Ogleton notes that the school's rapidly approaching holiday party "will require your student to bring in 24 homemade, decorated, gluten-free, vegan, nutless cupcakes." With a puzzled look on his face, he asks, "What in the Martha Stewart?!"
Many parents wrote in to relate to the agony of late-night school emails with specific last-minute requests. Here's a selection of their responses:
- "It’s out-of-control. Let’s go back to the 80s when we made one craft and it was a candy cane with pipe cleaner antlers and googly eyes."
- "My kids school is literally doing the whole a-- month of dress up days before holiday break. THREE WEEKS OF DRESS UP DAYS. 😭"
- "And those emails come out at like 9pm too lol 😂"
Some viewers even sent screenshots of their own school emails that repeated the things Ogleton said.
The conclusion of Ogleton's fictitious school email is chef's kiss perfection: "Oh, and please don't forget, we also have early dismissal the third week of this month on all days ending in 'y.' Will email complicated details about that and in equally annoying separate email. Happy Holidays."
"For who?" Ogleton wonders.
