During the holidays families are often reminded that goodwill does live on in the hearts of their fellow community members.
For the 16th year, the Des’ Aimes Social Club and Plant City Black Heritage will be hosting the Santa Sled Festival on Dec. 22, ensuring local families have a stress-free and merry Christmas. The festival draws hundreds of attendees each year.
“Each year we have more than 200 families, that’s more than 300 kids, come out to the event,”
Sharon Moody, event coordinator, said. “Organizations in the community come together and help us provide toys, bikes, clothes, groceries and ham or turkey for the families so the kids have something special on Christmas.”
Moody said the Christmas in the Park event, which serves more than 100 people annually, is not going to be offered this year. The event is usually held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, but because it is currently undergoing demolition they decided to forgo the event. Upon hearing the news, Moody reached out and now Santa Sled Festival is preparing to take on those families as well.
It’s a high demand and the group is working around the clock to ensure they will have enough goods to go around. Moody said the toys have “pretty much been situated,” but that they are still looking for donations for bicycles and canned goods.
The Plant City Black Heritage committee and the Des’ Aimes Social Club begin planning the event in September and October every year. In three months they manage to pull off one of the largest Christmas events in the city.
So far Moody said they have sponsors like the Kiwanis Club and La Red Ministries and businesses like Florida Insurance are stepping up and donating toys for the local youth.
Star Distribution is donating ham to give out at the event and have “adopted five families.” Employees from C&S Wholesale Grocers are also “adopting five families” and the warehouse has volunteered to donate turkeys for the festivities.
Families interested in participating in the festival should pick up applications from either the Greater Plant City Chamber of Commerce, 106 N. Evers St., or the Planteen Recreation Center, 301 N. Dort St., by Nov. 30. It’s open for all children age 3 years old to 10 years old, but Moody said they occasionally find themselves serving children up to 12 years old. During the day of festivities, families come to register between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. with an ID. The children need to be present during the event.
Once registered, the event kicks off at 10 a.m. with a non-stop celebration. Kids will have bounce houses to spend their time playing on and will have the opportunity to meet Santa Claus mere days before he comes to visit on Christmas Eve. A local church will be cooking hotdogs for the families and they can also enjoy a drink and snack throughout the party.
The number assigned to them at registration will then be called out and they will receive their toys and be entered into a raffle for the bicycles. Normally this is completed in a few hours, but the extra families this year may make it a slightly longer event.
When the families are ready to go home they are handed either a turkey or a ham and a bag full of groceries to help ease the burden of providing a Christmas dinner.
“Just seeing the families, how appreciative they are, that makes this all worth it,” Moody said. “Some of these people, they don’t have the money to buy their families everything at Christmas. We give out toys, bikes, food, clothes, everything they could imagine they can get that day.”
Santa Sled Festival is an event the entire community has come to cherish. Volunteers ranging from the Key Club at Plant City High School to local community members and churches who love to lend a helping hand pitch in to pull off the elaborate event.
Last year they had nearly 80 bicycles donated to give away. While Moody said they would love to be able to give a bicycle to everyone that stops by they are happy to impact as many lives as they can. All of the donated bicycles are given away via a raffle and Moody said you often see the children lucky enough to score a bike riding them all year long to school and through the streets.
“I would love for it to continue to get bigger, to grow bigger,” Moody said. “I know there’s a need in the area. The area we are in it continues to be such a need in this area. You’ve got people, some people that don’t have food to feed their families. They may have money to pay their bills, but not enough to then go out and buy presents. We’re able to help with that and I hope that’s something we will always be able to do.”