For Christmas in the City, the future looks merry and bright

Thank you so much to the Boston Globe for covering Christmas in the City!

The beauty of Christmas in the City, beyond the selfless generosity of its all-volunteer army of 2,500, is the simplicity of its mission: that all children deserve a gift of their choice for Christmas.

That’s what inspired Jake Kennedy and his wife, Sparky, to launch Christmas in the City in 1989, when 165 mothers and their children from the city’s homeless shelters were treated to a festive party at Boston City Hall.

Thirty years later, the party at the city’s convention center had grown to 6,000 people from shelters all around Eastern Massachusetts. That party, in 2019, was the last for Jake Kennedy, who died from ALS in October 2020.