The Christmas Giving Tree

— by Cara Russell —

Born on Christmas, loves the Holidays, and absolutely believes in Santa Claus—Judi Lindgren, an Island Market IGA employee, has either been involved or coordinated the annual Christmas Giving Tree at the Store for the last 15 Christmases.

In 1999 Dawn Parnell created the Giving Tree at the Market. The following year, new Orcas resident Lindgren joined her. Two Christmases later, Lindgren found herself not only in charge, but alone in a room, in a sea of presents all needing to be sorted. “That year was the scariest year of my life,” Lindgren said with a big smile. “For one person to try and accommodate the 125 kids that we had at the time—it was overwhelming, and I found myself back-checking a lot.” The following year Lindgren connected with Erin O’Dell of Orcas Family Connections and Amber Paulsen of Kaleidoscope, and now the three of them take care of everything.

The Giving Tree program’s sole purpose is to help local families who struggle financially to provide for their kids during the holiday season. And the number of Orcas children placing their Christmas wish list (no more than three gifts costing no more than $100) on the tree has grown every year, nearly doubling since its beginnings. There are currently 200 children signed up for the tree this year.

However, the Giving Tree not only serves the needs and warms the hearts of these local families—the community response to the Giving Tree is met every year with as much excitement. “The involvement from the community is phenomenal. People get excited around Thanksgiving, and anxiously watch for the tree, to be able to pick their tags,” says Lindgren.

Once someone from the community has chosen a tag from the tree, they get to go shopping. Each tag comes with a request for three gifts, as well as the age and gender of the child. The secret Santa goes off and buys one or all three of the gifts, wraps them, tosses on a bow and then drops them off at Island Market. Lindgren takes it from there– sorting, separating, and bagging the gifts for each individual child.

People from Kaleidoscope then come to pick them up. Once at Kaleidoscope, the gifts wait in a room to get picked up by each family, where assuredly they will have to wait until Christmas morning, finally getting to be opened by someone, probably in footie pajamas.

All efforts are made to be sure the children of the Giving Tree receive fair and equal gifts. Each year there are always a few tags still left, and often those are the tricky gifts requests to fulfill.

Judi Lindgren says, “Having four grown kids, I don’t know what all of the new toys are. It gets pretty comical trying to find a toy that you have no idea what you are looking for!”

Lindgren evaluates these tricky tags, often referring to Google to get some idea of what this new toy is. Every year people also donate money, and Lindgren is able to use those donations to get those last few gifts. It is usually down to the last minute, and if she cannot find the items on island or online, she and her husband take a mad dash shopping trip off island.

“It’s really quite fun and hectic. We each take a stack of tags, grab two carts and just go for it. One year we couldn’t find beanbag chairs. We looked everywhere. When I finally found them there were only three left, then someone grabbed two, and there was a couple standing in front of the last one. My husband reached around the couple, grabbed it, threw it in the cart and off we went.”

• If you need a little extra help providing Christmas for your family this year, enrollment forms are available to pick up and drop off no later than the third week of December. The forms can be located at all of the schools and childcare facilities, as well as at the food bank and Island Market.
• If you would like to donate or participate in the Giving Tree, these are the main ways to do so.

1. Pick a tag from the tree
2. Donate money
3. Donate new or lightly used items.

“We try to accommodate people who donate as much as possible, because they are doing it because they want to, and we appreciate any form of giving that people have to give,” says Lindgren.