Tears, fancy-dress tyranny and tedious discourse: it can only be World Book Day | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

The pressure can be overwhelming - so I gave up on green eggs and ham and found a low-effort solution

I was going to do green eggs and ham. That would be a cool costume, the competitive mother that sometimes lives inside me thought. Thankfully I silenced her, as I always do, not wanting to spend hours after returning from a trip to the theatre constructing said eggs and ham out of felt. My son is only two, but this year will be his second World Book Day costume. Last year I was even more half-arsed: he went to nursery as Peekaboo Moon. In other words, he wore a jumper with a moon on it.

The tedious online discourse about World Book Day costumes rears its head every year, but to a relatively new parent the whole thing is a bit baffling. Make a costume or don't, buy a costume or don't ... who cares, as long as the child is happy? Except what I'm learning is that the World Book Day costume is, to some people, symbolic of what sort of parent you are, and the whole thing carries quite a lot of class baggage.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist