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| 4 year-old, Harper Maxfield, sends a letter to Santa |
Sometimes, Santa needs a little help gathering stories.
Windham residents, Joanne Mattiace and Maggie Terry, have set up a festive holiday
display outside their home, complete with a mailbox to collect letters for
Santa.
The couple encourages children to write letters telling Santa
what Christmas means to them. Children who have dropped off letters have
received a couple of small presents, an ornament, and a letter from Santa in
return.
Town Councilor Jarrod Maxfield lives in the neighborhood and
said his four-year-old daughter, Harper, “couldn’t have been more excited when
we walked through the neighborhood to see the display and Santa mailbox.” She was also very excited to receive a
response from Santa, though she was worried that she hadn’t put cookies out
until she was reassured that Santa would be back, Maxfield said.
The Santa mailbox is something new for Mattiace and Terry this
year. The idea came spontaneously, Mattiace said, when she and Terry were at
the Christmas Tree Shop. “We saw this great mailbox and thought ‘let’s decorate
it and ask the kids for their letters,” she said.
The display draws people out in the neighborhood, especially
at night when it’s all lit up. “It’s a nice thing for the neighborhood to bring
people together,” Maxfield said.
Although giving Santa a helping hand is new to the pair,
charitable giving is not. “We’ve done a lot
of charitable events at Christmas time,” Mattiace said. Each year the products
attorney reaches out to clients for product donations. “They almost all come
through for us,” she said. Clients
donate many household items, like blankets, comforters, sheets and pillows, as
well as personal items. This year, Samsonite donated 120 backpacks. So, they
reached out to other clients for things like toiletries, gloves or mittens, and
hats, and donated the stuffed backpacks to the Preble Street Resource Center
and the women’s crisis center.
When
Mattiace and Terry began their holiday giving projects, they focused on the
women’s crisis center. The first year they put some products under the tree for
the women and their children. Over time, they collected enough donations to
give things to the center to hold for women so that when they found a new place
to live, they had some things to get them started. Then Samsonite donated backpacks, and the
charitable giving was extended to Preble Street. “This year, we had so many additional
donations of cash and checks from our family and friends that we extended the
donation to the Windham Food Pantry,” Mattiace said.
Her
clients respond eagerly to her requests for donations, and this year over $7000
worth of products went out, Mattiace said.
She added that they only donate to 501c3 organizations and tell clients
that they can provide tax documentation if requested. “In the eleven years
we’ve done this, one company, one time, has asked us for documentation. These
companies are doing it because we ask them to, not because they want a write
off,” she said.
Next
year, Mattiace said they plan to expand their giving to Westbrook, after a
recent visit to that city reminded them that there are some organizations there
who also need some help. When she retires, in the next year or so, Mattiace
said she hopes to start a foundation that will reach out to at-risk teens,
children, and residents of nursing homes.
“I
really think that Maggie and I have focused on charitable giving at Christmas
time because we adopted a young boy years ago…and Christmas has meant a lot to
him,” Mattiace said. “Everybody needs a
little holiday cheer, whether you’re Christian or Jewish or whatever, whether
you’re old or young, straight or gay. We all just need to be a little kinder to
each other,” she said.
