Area elves busy saving Christmas for 1,000 kids

 

Gifts donated during the 2023 Leftover Turkey Trot.

This column, published in the Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, edition of The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA, on the 41st annual Christmas Is For Kids gift drive, calls attention to the volunteers who spend a good chunk of their holiday season giving their time to make sure that about 1,000 needy children and teenagers --- many living in shelters or in difficult situations --- will receive presents, including badly-needed clothes, on Christmas Day.
I’ve been writing about the drive for more than 30 years, and have been volunteering since 2017, and the drive is truly a godsend to hundreds of families in the greater Attleboro area.
The drive has been a model of consistent gift-giving over the last four decades, and I salute all of the volunteers, lovingly referred to as “elves,” who work countless hours to make Christmas a reality for so many.
The link to the column, as it appears on the newspaper’s website is: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_news/larry-kessler-despite-location-christmas-is-for-kids-focused-on-mission-of-delivering-a-happy/article_f3d8feec-e8a8-5402-af17-73a12c3a6fd9.html
*************
How the 150 volunteers with Christmas Is For Kids, the Attleboro area's largest gift drive organized by the Greater Attleboro Council for Children, carry out their duties has been tweaked over the 41 years of its existence, but one thing has remained constant: a singular focus on providing gifts for those who need them.
That most definitely has been the same this year, despite the drive moving its nerve center to the Emerald Square Mall in North Attleboro from the dilapidated building at 35 County St. in Attleboro that once housed both the former Attleboro High School and the Brennan Middle school, which had been the drive’s headquarters since 2009.
The move to the third floor of the mall in a storefront adjacent to where Sears used to be has offered a more compact space, but also a much safer and healthier environment than the former school building did.
Organizers hope the new space will be temporary until the Council for Children’s new building in North Attleboro is ready. Fundraising has been ongoing, but the soaring cost of construction materials has delayed the groundbreaking. So, when the mall space became available, the drive was glad to add it to its long list of locations over the years.
Kelly Fox, the drive’s longtime chairperson, in an email interview, said those past locations in Attleboro have included: the back of the Attleboro Jewelry Outlet, space on Water Street, two years on Emory Street in the former Community VNA Building, a closed bank space on Park Street, an old restaurant In Attleboro, a couple of years at the Hebron Methodist Church on Route 152 in Attleboro near the Seekonk line and, for several years, the Masonic Lodge on North Main Street.
Now, with the drive in the midst of its busiest week filling wish lists for children, Fox is pleading with the public to adopt kids and for donors who have already been matched with children to drop off their gifts well before Saturday’s deadline.
"We are so grateful to the community for their help and support every year in making sure that every child has something to open this Christmas. Now we need the phones to ring to make sure we continue (to fulfill) that promise that no child will be forgotten," she said.
To be matched to children, call the drive’s hot line at 774-306-4013 at these times: 5-8 p.m. this week through Friday, Dec. 8 and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 9.
Fox said that after business concluded over the weekend, more than 200 of the 1,000 children accepted into this year’s drive had yet to be matched with donors.
Elves hard at work
Since before Thanksgiving, the volunteers, affectionately called elves, have been working diligently, and I’ve been getting a firsthand look at the operation while volunteering.
As I approached the new location for the first time, I was struck by how eerily quiet the mall is, as there are only a few stores open on the third floor. But I soon discovered that the volunteers hadn’t missed a beat.
Since Thanksgiving, there have been two shifts a day (1-4 p.m. and 5-8 p.m.) for volunteers busy filling bags.
It’s important to note that those bags aren’t only filled with toys and games, but also with urgently needed clothes ---- coats, sweatshirts, pajamas, winter hats, gloves and boots --- as well as blankets and books.
Indeed, contrary to how some critics have at times viewed the drive, the kids and teens served --- via donors' gifts as well as cash and gift cards that let organizers buy needed presents --- are receiving many basics, something that is particularly urgent due to the fragile economy.
Yet it’d be a gross misconception to say that these families are getting a handout, because applying for the program requires a rigorous process that includes taking classes.
Fox said eight hours of classes, conducted in partnership with area nonprofits, are required for families in the first four years of participating in the program, with four more hours required for those in the fifth year or more, including classes in personal finance. 
In addition, the program has been seeing more requests from families in shelters, which makes the drive’s work more vital than ever.
Another constant is something that can’t be stressed enough: the drive's annual miracle is a product of several qualities that are in agonizingly short supply these days: generosity, kindness, selflessness and a desire to work cooperatively and civilly with others to achieve a greater goal than to jam the stores on Black Friday to buy gifts that will be mostly forgotten by Boxing Day.
That spirit of serendipitous cooperation is personified by the dozens of organizations that join together yearly to either donate gifts or to help out the drive.
I've been writing about the drive since first joining The Sun Chronicle in 1989, and I’ve been an elf since 2017, while my wife has volunteered even longer. As such, I can vouch for the unwavering dedication of the  elves, whose efforts assure that hundreds of kids will have gifts on Christmas Day.
That leaves organizers humbled and grateful, and their gratitude was on display on the Sunday after Thanksgiving outside the North Attleboro Town Hall, where more than 450 entrants in the Second Annual Leftover Turkey Trot raised more than $10,000 for the drive and donated about 200 toys.
Fox and the drive's organizers were positively beaming as the participants were heading home shortly after noon --- and their wide smiles epitomized what has fueled Christmas Is For Kids’ miracles for 41 years: boundless joy in giving to others.
Larry Kessler is a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor and can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com