CITY SANTA BEGINNINGS
Through the Years
City Santa’s wrap parties started in year two of gift giving when friends asked to help us wrap gifts for children who wrote letters to Santa Claus.
By year three we were waist deep in toothpaste, personal care, and gifts, and we had outgrown our apartment.
The following year with very little money and all of it going to families, we were in a bind.
We reached out to landlords in our neighborhood of the East Village in NYC and explained City Santa and our mission. One gave us free space to work out of for six weeks.
For the next twenty years we called landlords all over the city and convinced them to give us space to set up our Santa workshop for the season.
Companies began donating wrapping paper, clothing, candy, toys, home goods and more. Volunteers shopped for clothing, personal care products, and toys and stretched every dollar as far as it could go. And they followed us anywhere regardless of accommodations!
Friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances wrapped gifts and filled stockings in dark leaky basements and construction sites without heat, as well as in famous people's screening rooms and fancy landmark buildings.
They hauled bags of gifts and boxes of food up and down flights of stairs and piled them in freight and passenger elevators. Then delivered to shelters, hospitals, schools and senior centers in downpours and blizzards in taxi’s, cars, vans, and pick-up trucks. And every year they came back for more.
They truly are the heroes in the story.
2003
Waist deep, and we had outgrown our apartment!
2004
We were on the move! We became a 501(c) 3 non-profit, created our logo, and moved our wrap party from our apartment to the basement in a church.
2005
Growing fast! We picked up more letters at the post office and product donations started coming in. Our Santa workshop moved to the gymnasium at a church, and we took over the entire space.
It was also the year the Associated Press got word of us and sent a photographer to take pics of our stockings! (Cat not included.)
2006
Moving on! This time to an empty Tibetan restaurant. We found this three days before we were scheduled to have our first wrap party.
Whew! It was narrow and tight but once we cleaned the kitchen it turned out to be just right. Santa’s workshop got down to the business of wrapping gifts and delivering Christmas around the five boroughs of NYC.
2007
Bring on the applause! We moved to a theater that had been empty for years. Cold and leaky, but volunteers worked around buckets to wrap and deliver hundreds of gifts and toys to happy families.
2008
Dashing through the snow! The space did not have heat so space heaters to the rescue and wrapping continued unabated. Rock on volunteers!
2009
More snow! Another snowy holiday and a space without heat. But the volunteers were in it to win it! They donned hats, scarves and gloves and got down to the business of making the holidays cheery and bright for the less fortunate.
2010
Bow wow! We moved into an empty vet’s office for the season. So busy wrapping and lining the hall with gifts we ran out of time for photos.
