Christmas Day is my favorite day in the hospital. We go from room to room and pass out presents and see kids’ faces light up and say, “I didn’t think Santa would find me here, but he still found me in the hospital!”

It keeps the magic of the holiday alive.

Throughout the year, we’re always receiving calls and emails about people wanting to donate, but it explodes in September, October, November and December. We’re regularly meeting donors at the front of the hospital with our big red carts to collect donations. People bring massive semi trucks of toys. It’s a big hoopla and fun to get pictures. We have annual donors and past patients who do toy drives, and we store all of these gifts in “Santa’s Workshop” in the hospital.

The generosity of people is incredible. Without them, we’re not able to make the holidays happen for our patients or provide those gifts, which we also use throughout the year for kids’ birthdays or when they celebrate a big treatment milestone. 

One year, we filled the entire Therapeutic Arts Room at the Dallas campus to the ceiling with stuffed animals. It was insane. I love seeing the entire community come together like that. 

We also have Amazon Wish Lists for each of our campuses, where we list high-need items like toys, musical instruments and infant items. Those toys are delivered to the Child Life offices and stored in our Christmas pile for when we shop for patients. 

Donations are important all year round, but especially during the holidays because we can’t make the joy and fun for patients without those donations. There’s something about seeing a kid open up a present that they had been wanting and seeing their face light up because we were able to provide that gift because someone donated it. 

And for a moment, they’re taken away from the chemotherapy treatment they had that morning or the massive surgery they had recently, and they have a piece of joy that helps them cope with being in the hospital.