Santa Claus is not the one one that travels round with a car stuffed with toys. Each vacation season, Patricia Gallagher fills her automotive with stuffed animals and drives round Philadelphia. She does not give them to children, she provides them to seniors.
Gallagher instructed CBS Information her Christmas custom began in 2009. She was an empty nester and felt lonely. "I simply acquired this concept in my head to name two nursing houses at random and ask if my mom and I may come and browse 'Twas the Night time Earlier than Christmas,'" she mentioned.
She introduced a few of her children' stuffed animals to the nursing dwelling along with her for the seniors to carry whereas she learn. "However once we went to collect them and take them again to go to the subsequent nursing dwelling, no one wished to surrender their teddy bear or their stuffed animal in any approach," she mentioned.
That Dec. 1, Patricia noticed the facility of a easy Christmas present. The room was drab, she mentioned. "It was only a nursing dwelling and it was simply a number of aged folks sitting in wheelchairs simply sort of ready and ready for what?" she mentioned. "And swiftly, the entire room grew to become alive with folks jingling bells and holding Santa Claus [dolls] and all the things and so they actually did not wish to give them again as a result of they thought we had given them a present."
Patricia wished to proceed her custom of giving, so she put an advert on Craigslist, asking for gently used stuffed animals. In her first two years of gathering, she obtained greater than 11,000 donated stuffed animals. She mentioned typically native colleges will maintain stuffed animal collections on her behalf, or a toddler who outgrew their toys will donate.
"I bear in mind a boy named Jake who had a bar mitzvah undertaking, and his mom requested if he may acquire 100 [for me]," she mentioned. "Properly, he collected 413."
"There was one other synagogue that collected 800 for me – twice. There was a center college in Flemington, New Jersey, that collected 800 or 900 for me, twice."
"One mom particularly mentioned her daughter handed away, she had all these stuffed animals ... she had stored all of them on her daughter's mattress for years, however when she noticed my submit on Craigslist, she felt it was her daughter saying, 'Mother, it is time to go these alongside so others can get pleasure from them.'"
After receiving a surplus, Gallagher began capping what number of she'll acquire at one time, and says she'll absorb about 250 stuffed animals every week throughout the vacation season. Then, she takes them to senior dwelling amenities and houses for veterans and retired nuns.
"Who would assume that aged veterans would need stuffed animals? However they did. Not just for consolation, however they have been dialog starters. It reminded them of after they have been a child," she mentioned. "And I bear in mind one man mentioned, 'You already know, I by no means wished to go to first grade and I would not go. And my father mentioned if I might go to first grade that day, he would take me to the Brooklyn Zoo. And you understand what? This was the primary animal I noticed on the Brooklyn Zoo and it regarded similar to this giraffe.'"
Spreading pleasure is not only a vacation pastime for Gallagher. She is also called the "Glad Flower Woman" round Philadelphia, as a result of she collects previous flowers from shops and passes them out to anybody who wants a pick-me-up.
"I've all the time heard of the giver's excessive – I did not know what that meant – however truthfully, if you give, you actually do get extra again," Gallagher mentioned. "Each morning, whether or not it is the flowers or the stuffed animals, I've a function."
Even on Christmas Day, Gallagher mentioned she's going to replenish her automotive and drive to a nursing dwelling handy them out. As a result of similar to Santa, her job of spreading pleasure does not cease on Christmas.