SANTA FUND:
With only days to go, the Star needs your help to reach our objective
What does the Star’s Santa Fund mean? An awful lot, to some,
With less than a week left in the Star Santa Fund campaign, we still need your help to meet our target. We need your help, that is, to continue to provide tens of thousands of underprivileged children with a gift at Christmas.
What do the Star Santa Fund boxes, with their gifts of warm clothing, toys, books and more, mean to our city and its residents? Over the course of the campaign, the Star receives many notes of appreciation from former gift box recipients (many of whom are now donors) that expound on that question.
At the recent Star Santa Fund Christmas concert, for instance, Ellen Trotman handed a note to the fund’s director, Barbara Mrozek. Her note, excerpted here, captures well the role the Santa Fund has long played in the GTA, transforming the lives of children and communities, and why your donations matter.
“I was a proud recipient of the coveted Star Santa Fund box for a lot of my childhood years. … My father died of spinal meningitis in 1945, leaving my mother a widow with 10 of us kids. With my father’s insurance proceeds, my mom bought a house on Augusta Ave. in the heart of Kensington Market. At about that time, there was an influx of immigrants, primarily of Jewish descent who arrived from Russia, Poland and Germany. These people came here with basically nothing and worked from dawn to dusk in stores in the Augusta/Kensington/Baldwin core that became known as “the Jewish Market.” I tell you this because everyone in the neighbourhood, including my family, would be considered ‘poor’ by today’s standards, even though we never felt poor. “I never knew how or when the Star boxes arrived at our house. Even being the eighth child of 10, I knew there would be at least one present with my name on it under our tree on Christmas morning. A magical box filled with warm mitts, a hat, wool stockings for the girls; thick warm socks for the boys. Even if the contents were a little scratchy, we loved it all and wore them proudly. There was also a bag of Christmas candy and I believe peanuts in their shells.
“It all began when we ventured into the neighbourhood and saw all the kids strutting their brand-new clothes — identical apparel in different colours. There was no mistak- ing where they came from.
“Then the best part happened. For lack of a better word, a trading frenzy started. Someone with a green hat and mitts liked the red ensemble better that was in my box. Without a second thought, we traded. Someone didn’t get candy in their box, so we shared. Someone didn’t get a box, so we gave up something from our box so they would have something, too.
“I never realized it then, but the Star box was more than a box filled with goodies. It was something to look forward to and, more importantly, it brought the community that much closer. Brought it to care. It created an opportunity to get to know those kids you probably never played with or even offered a passing hello.
“Unless you lived it, you have no idea what effect the Star box had on people’s lives and community. So, no. It wasn’t just a box. It was everything good that only happens at Christmas.
“Here we are decades later and the Star box lives on. It lives on because of the people who cared enough to keep the tradition going and the generosity of people like yourselves.
“Let’s all do what we can to keep the Star box tradition alive.”
Please help us reach our goal. Help us put a smile on the faces of 45,000 children who may grow up to be just like Ellen Trotman — never forgetting, always appreciating. Click here to donate now.
If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell, please email santaclausfund@thestar.ca.