A recurring adventure frames weekends during late November and early December: the delivery of 50,000 Christmas gift boxes to children in the Greater Toronto Area, for The Star’s Santa Claus Fund .

Buffeted by the first real blast of winter and shoehorned among the year-end shopping crush and Christmas pageants at schools and churches, the delivery of the boxes — will they be red, blue, green or some funky collage this year? — is a righteous ritual always worth engaging in.

My introduction to it came via another Star charity, the Fresh Air Fund , a gem of an idea founded in 1901, that found itself short of donations in 2010. The irrepressible Barb Mrozek, then the director of charities and philanthropy at the Star, called me, requesting I write a column urging people to step up and

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