Christmas Basket Project
Providing food and gifts to low-income families during the holiday season.
The Christmas Basket project began as a labor of love in 1977 from the vision of a community member to provide Christmas for families in need. The project rapidly flourished and improved each subsequent year. In the late 1990s, the program was moved under the umbrella of our local Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The Catholic community, along with the First Presbyterian Church, are now the organizers and leaders of the project and continue to follow in the footsteps of Grace’s inspiration to sow small seeds of charity and love. The project has become ecumenical with help from other local churches, private schools, businesses, youth groups.
Our Story
The Christmas Basket project story began 40+ years ago as a modest effort at Holy Rosary Catholic Church to provide a Christmas dinner and a good used toy to local families.
Christ the King Catholic Church and the First Presbyterian Church joined in soon after. In the mid 90’s, the Catholic and Presbyterian churches combined their efforts to form the Christmas Basket project under the umbrella of St. Vincent de Paul.
The early years
In the early years, the distribution location of the food and gifts rotated among the three church buildings until the number of families needing our assistance outgrew the space available at any of the church buildings.
In 2000, the Christmas Basket project began looking for a large vacant building that could be used for about a month at a low or no cost.
Christmas Baskets has used the following locations:
- Old Ernst Building on Broadway.
- Old Fred Meyer on Anderson.
- Old Buttrey/Osco on First Street.
- Old Rite Aid Building.
- Old Teton Toyota on Anderson.
- Old Smith Chevrolet on North Holmes.
- Old CAL Ranch on Anderson.
- Old Wackerli Subaru on North Holmes.
- Melaleuca warehouse on 35th West.
The Christmas Basket project is always looking for volunteers.
Our Process
The process begins in early November when applicants are interviewed at one of the Catholic churches.
After a brief screening to validate residency and income requirements, each family is interviewed to determine needs and desired gift for each child.
We then create a tag for each child with name, age, gender, needs, and desired gift. The tags are placed on Christmas trees in numerous churches and businesses around town where individuals can take one or multiple tags, purchase the gifts, and bring the unwrapped gifts to our facility where the data from the “filled” tag is recorded.
The gifts are then prepared by volunteers and ready for families to pickup on distribution day.
Along with gifts, each family receives food boxes according to family size.
Usually about $15,000 of food is ordered (including lots of turkeys) and purchased with monetary donations. The food is transported to the facility where volunteers spend several evenings filling boxes with the food.
Our goal is to provide enough food for a Christmas dinner and food for about another week for each family.
Distribution Day
On distribution day, the food boxes and bags of gifts for each family are carried out to waiting family vehicles. Distribution Day is successful and runs smoothly because of many dedicated volunteers .
The impact of the Christmas Basket Project in our community. Since 2020, we have helped 790 families and 2,489 children have a Merry Christmas.
