Help Santa Make His Big Run
Once again this year, Santa will be making special deliveries to families in need. In more than a decade, the Annapolis Santa Run has helped over 7,000 children wake up to a brighter Christmas morning. Santa makes his run courtesy of Annapolis Firefighters Local 1926. But the elves providing the toys are the citizens and businesses throughout the Annapolis region.
This year, SoFo, the businesses of south Forest Drive, joins the long list of elfish contributors: Annapolis Sons of the Signers; Annapolis Fire Department Headquarters staff; Annapolis Police, Anne Arundel County sheriffs; Anne Arundel County Police; Anne Arundel County Schools; the Center For Applied Technology South; Chesapeake Antique Fire Apparatus Association; Fleet and Family Support Services Annapolis; Heroes; volunteer fire departments in Arnold, Cape St Claire Eastport, West Annapolis and Woodland Beach; and W&P Nautical — plus community and church volunteers and local businesses.
SoFo pushes the Santa Run into an early start. Saturday, Dec. 6, Santa arrives by fire truck to collect toys at the Village Greens Shops. Meet him there with your gift of toys from 2 to 4pm.
The traditional second-Sunday Santa Run continues the evening of Dec. 13 with Santa visiting more than 50 communities in Annapolis, Annapolis Neck and Broadneck. On every run, he rides an antique fire engine, in a motorcade led by a police escort and followed by a modern fire engine and a chase vehicle. At each stop, Santa meets and greets children. In charitable turnabout, the kids bring Santa new toys to take to the North Pole.
On Christmas Eve, Santa returns the favor, delivering gifts of toys to the family of a sick child without the means to Christmas shop, the mother fighting cancer who is too weak to shop, the child who is growing up in poverty, a father who’s lost his job.
“We help create memories, from the child who meets Santa for the first time to our elderly neighbors reliving childhood memories by helping with toy sorting,” says Santa Run chairman Lt. John Muhitch.
In October, Firehouse magazine honored Muhitch’s coordination of the Santa Run with a Community Service Award.
Now Muhitch has a message for you: “Please come out on Dec. 6 and 14 and support Santa Run.”
Toys should be new, unwrapped and selected for girls and boys between the ages of two and 15. Please skip electronic games.
Find Santa Run stops at www.annapolissantarun.com. Toys can also be dropped off at any Annapolis fire station the weekend of Dec. 20-21.