Friends get the chance to deliver many smiles

Ramiro Torres, a talk show co-host on WJMN-FM, told Alma Brucal of Quincy about the Globe Santa Foundation yesterday while helping to collect donations at South Station. (Taslim Sidi for The Boston Globe)

Each year Globe Santa receives many letters seeking his help in providing gifts for children of parents who are disabled and financially unable to provide their youngsters with Christmas presents.

One such letter was written by a disabled mother of three who is living on food stamps and having a tough time trying to provide gifts for her children this Christmas.

With a Social Security payment being the only money she gets each month, she wrote that it has been hard to pay her $1,100 rent along with household bills like those for gas and for "food for her youngsters, who eat a lot.

"My fear is that if I don't have the money for presents with both of my youngest boys still believing in Santa, they will think that Santa forgot about my boys," the mother wrote in a letter to Globe Santa.

But thanks to thousands of generous cash donations from Globe Santa Friends, nearly 30,000 families in Eastern Massachusetts like this one will be able, with gifts from Globe Santa, to provide presents for their children this Christmas.

For more than 50 years, Globe Santa has provided presents to underprivileged families. As many as 60,000 children will get presents this year because of contributions made to the Globe Santa Fund, donations ranging from monies raised by children holding fairs to many hundred of dollars from large companies. A number of the gifts are made in memory of loved ones, and there are some each year from people who, when they were youngsters, had received gifts from Globe Santa.

By donating to the drive, and becoming one of Santa's Friends, you can help children wake up on Christmas with smiles.

"I wanted it to be a good Christmas for my kids," wrote the mother, whose oldest son lives in a residential home. "Please, if you can make my kids have a halfway-decent Christmas, I would be so grateful".