
Courtesy of the Carrboro Commons
The holiday season is filled with traditions. Decorating the Christmas tree, kissing under the mistletoe and lighting the candles of the menorah are all timeless customs that evoke the excitement and wonder of the holiday season.
Balloons and Tunes has its own holiday tradition: helping provide toys and holiday gifts to Orange County children and teenagers in need through the Share Your Holiday Program.
“Honestly, I can’t even think what Christmas would be without this program,†said Pat Garavaglia, co-owner of Balloons and Tunes. “It fills my mind for weeks. It fills my heart for weeks.â€
The Share Your Holiday Program is co-sponsored by Balloons and Tunes and the Orange County Department of Social Services. Through the program, willing members of the community sponsor children and teenagers for the holidays.
Once someone decides to sponsor a child, he or she receives the child’s name, sizes and holiday wish list. The Orange County Department of Social Service recommends that a sponsor spend $150 to $200 per child.
“You’re Santa Claus. You get to pick [what you buy the children]!†Garavaglia said.
Specifically, Balloons and Tunes, also co-owned by Sharon Collins, assists the Orange County Department of Social Services in making sure every Orange County child in foster care or protective custody is completely sponsored.
“Generally there are between 150 and 200 kids that are completely sponsored by this program,†Garavaglia said.
Balloons and Tunes has been assisting DSS with this program for more than 20 years, and Garavaglia said the outpouring of love and support from the community makes Balloons and Tunes’ participation in the Share Your Holiday Program worthwhile.
“I run into so many wonderful people that sponsor kids, that give money,†Garavaglia said. “People help in all kinds of ways. There’s some people that don’t have enough money to help buy things, so they’ll shop for us. We have people that just do deliveries for us. We have people that just assemble bicycles for us.â€
Because the children are in protective custody and foster care, the sponsors do not actually deliver the gifts in person. The toys and gifts are deposited at designated toy drop sites, and then social workers deliver the gifts to the children.
But Garavaglia said she does not think this is necessarily a bad thing.
“The whole thing just gets to play out in your own head,†Garavaglia said. “It’s about the magic and the mystery of the season and caring for someone that you’ll never meet [which] is a very swell thing.â€
Once Balloons and Tunes has helped set up sponsors for every Orange County child in foster care and protective custody, it then turns its attention to assisting the Toy Chest, another holiday program sponsored by DSS.
According to an Orange County Department of Social Services press release, there are 7,000 Orange County children in low-income households. The Toy Chest program collects toys and allows parents from these low-income households to choose two or three gifts to give to their children for the holidays.
“It’s meant to be a supplement, hoping that the parents can buy them something [too],†Garavaglia said. “It’s meant to supplement Christmas for them because these are very hard times.â€
More than 20 years ago, Balloons and Tunes responded to a DSS advertisement in the newspaper calling for holiday sponsorships for children, and that is how the business began its assistance with the program, Garavaglia said.
She said two or three years later, Balloons and Tunes was sponsoring 10 to 15 children, and friends and community members wanted to help, so Balloons and Tunes would help them find children to sponsor as well.
“And it’s just grown in that way,†Garavaglia said. “Hardly anybody that does it doesn’t do it the next year because it’s really fun for them.
“It makes me very happy. I can’t imagine Christmas without it.â€
Zach Hamilton is a UNC student writing for the Carrboro Commons, a bi-weekly online lab newspaper for Jock Lauterer’s Community Journalism class at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

