Surprise and joy in Santa Fund gift boxes
No child feels left out when opening packages on Xmas
Michelle Nightingale likes to carry on the Christmas traditions she grew up with: popcorn string decorations, fresh cookies on Christmas morning and a Star box under the tree.
She remembers, as a little girl growing up in the Jane and Finch area, the thrill of opening her gift box from the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund.
“What’s going to be in there?” she’d wonder. “You just don’t know. You know there’s more than one thing in there, so you get excited.”
The boxes, each filled with warm clothes, mittens, a hat, a book, a toy, some candy and toothbrush and toothpaste kits, haven’t changed much since former Toronto Star publisher Joseph E. Atkinson started the Santa Claus fund in 1906.
But it hadn’t occurred to Nightingale when she grew up and had children of her own that the boxes would still be around. A welfare caseworker let her know the extra Christmas help was available to her kids, as it had been for her.
“That’s amazing!” she recalls thinking when she found out. “Sometimes people stop doing certain things. So to see that they still carry it out, and it’s been obviously — I’m 37 now — a long, long time.”
Knowing the joy the boxes can bring, Nightingale is happy to help others receive the gift. She and her colleagues at the Flemingdon Park Ministry facilitate applications and deliveries for the Santa Claus fund.
As an assistant project co-ordinator, she also helps run a food-access program at the ministry, which includes weekly drop-in kitchens.
“It’s just amazing that the ministry and the Star box can come together like that, and help the community out. It really makes a big difference,” she said.
Nightingale left Jane and Finch 14 years ago for Flemingdon Park, with her eldest son Dre, who is now17, and another child, Marcel, now 14, on the way. The boys, along with brother Camar, 12, and little sister Eve, 11, found Star boxes under the tree off and on for the past few years.
To put four boxes, tied with string, under the tree has been a “major help,” she said, and a defence against any hurt feelings and cries of unequal treatment that can ring out in a house with four children.
“Sometimes you can’t get your kids all the same things, and you can’t afford to get a lot of things,” she said. “You get a bit of everything in the box for the kids. So no one feels left out when they open up the gift.”
For the kids it’s the toys, such as a set of dominoes that captured their imagination one year, that are the biggest draw. For her, it’s the extra warm clothes she treasures.
“Especially with kids losing their gloves and hats so many times through the winter, it really helps when you can get the help,” she said.
The fund will distribute 45,000 boxes to children in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Ajax and Pickering this year. If you have been touched by the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell, please email santaclausfund@thestar.ca.