During the Christmas Season, Key Club does a few service projects to make sure people get some Christmas gifts. With this club being a club where we put in the effort to help out our community, we do anything and everything to help out. This year we participated in Christmas for Kids and then Adopt-a-Senior, which was a new one for our club to be a part of. 

If you don’t know what Christmas for Kids is, it is a Kiwanis Club of Paris community service event they have put on since about 2011. They put out applications for families to apply to be a part of this event if they just need a little help getting their kids some Christmas presents. So the parent’s kids write out a list of what they really need and what they really want. If they ask for clothes they also give you their size and the kid’s age. So then people who have a big heart and would want everyone to have a happy Christmas will “adopt” 1 or 2 kids, or how many they want, and then they buy whatever is on the list for them. Once they get the gifts they can put them in a big black trash bag or just a bag that is not see-through. Near Christmas, Kiwanis puts on a little Christmas party that the kids can go to and have a little fun while their parents go to a different building to gather the big bag full of their gifts to put in their car to wrap once they get home. This year, we adopted a little boy, three years old, and a little girl, which was five or six. We got them both new clean clothes and some toys they have asked for Christmas. 

Adopt-a-Senior is a little different than Christmas for Kids, mainly because it’s the elderly than little kids and teenagers. Adopt-a-Senior is where you can adopt 1 or 2 elderly women when you call the Senior Citizen building they email you the list of the people you “adopted”. Then as you know, you just go out to stores and buy them the gifts they asked for. Instead of just putting the gifts in a black non-see-through bag, for this event you yourself can actually wrap the gifts you bought them. Once that is complete you drop off the wrap gifts to the Senior Citizen Center so they can give them their gifts. I would actually like to see the people we go the gifts for an actually watch them open their gifts and get really excited over them, but sadly we just drop them off. 

For this event, we received two elderly women to shop for Christmas to bring them the Christmas spirit. Just like for Christmas for Kids, they were given a list that was numbered to five to list off what they would really need or want as a Christmas gift. When reading both of the lists, you began to realize that Christmas isn’t all about getting the new iPhone 11 or getting that expensive-looking drone or video game. It’s about spending time with your family and friends. Then asking for items that you won’t forget about in the back of your closet, like clothes or a new dresser if you have nowhere to put your clothes. These elderly women plainly asked for cleaning supplies, paper towels, and even Dish Soap. When thinking about their lists, I myself was thinking about why their own families weren’t getting these gifts for them. Did their families just stick them in this senior nursing home just to forget about them? To make it someone else’s problem? Then I realized that’s why clubs and people are out there, to make sure they don’t get forgotten during this Christmas time. Happy Holidays everyone!