As Christmas approaches there is one job that most parents of school-age children inevitably dread – finding the annual nativity costume.

Whether it’s an angel, a sheep or a slightly more off-the-book alien – honestly, it’s a real nativity play – the Christmas production causes more headaches than one-too-many eggnogs.

In a bid to cut down on the stress, and reduce the amount of wasted costumes bought and worn once, a group from Falmouth is organising a swapping event to make sure that costumes past, present and future no longer haunt parents.

The star behind the good news is Bridie Toft, who first held such an event for Halloween costumes last month.

Parents were able to head along to MOOR, the coffee shop above Freeriders surf shop in Killigrew Street, with their children’s old outfits and swap them for ones for other pre-loved ones for free.

She said: "I read an article that the scariest thing about Halloween was the waste it creates, especially plastic tat, so we did a make and recycle Halloween this year.

"I also had costumes from previous years that don't fit my boys anymore so I figured someone else could make use of them and also that there must be other people with stuff they don't need any more, hence the idea for the exchange."

She added that MOOR coffee shop seemed like the perfect venue as it is plastic aware and central in the town for people to get to.

It caused so much interested on the Falmouth and Penryn CRAP community recycling Facebook page that Kirstie de la Mer, who is involved with Plastic Free Falmouth, asked Bridie if she could also organise one for Christmas play costumes.

Parents can head along to MOOR from this Monday, to donate unwanted outfits and potentially pick up new ones as an early Christmas that’s worth more than its weight in gold.

The swap shop will be available every day during coffee shop hours of 10am to 4pm in the run up to the festive season.

You know it makes frankin-sense.