Christmas Baskets The Orange Elks Lodge #1475 Christmas Basket Program continued in 2022.
The program assists our community by donating Christmas Baskets to families in need. The goal as in past years is to hand out 200 Christmas Baskets (boxes) to families in need with young children. We prepared 200 Christmas Baskets to help make Christmas a little more magical for the residents in our community. Colin Smith, the Lodges Christmas Basket Chairmen had the help of Mike Cash, Adam Thomasson and Don Westerfield to make this event a big success.
The program started the week before collecting the food and toys for the boxes.
Thursday, 14 members assembled the 200 boxes.
On Friday, the lodge prepared an Italian dinner for 80 people.
After dinner, we went to the lodge room to pack the boxes.
Orange Elks, family members and guests carried the boxes from station to the different stations. Pictured is Ashlyn Smith
Saturday morning, over forty Orange Elks, family members and friends handed out the boxes and toys in a drive through event.
The donations for this great event came from our lodge members, food from Grocery Outlet, food from Abound Food Care, SpoofDawgs donated pet food and treats, The Orange Blossoms delivered toys and we secured over 20 bike, 25 scooters and coloring books and crayons as well as Drug Awareness Coloring Books for the event. A big Thank You to the City of Orange for use of the City Hall parking lot and to the Orange Police Department who assisted with traffic control.
