Give a gift

Tom Milstead
Posted 12/5/18

The Christmas season has definitely taken over Main Street in Torrington.

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Give a gift

Posted

By Tom Milstead

tmilstead@torringtontelegram.com

TORRINGTON – The Christmas season has definitely taken over Main Street in Torrington. 

The wreaths are hung from the light posts with care, and the sign outside of Torrington Office Supply says that Santa will soon be there. The Goshen County Chamber of Commerce is playing Christmas music down the length of the street. Outside of Pinnacle Bank, they’re ringing a Salvation Army bell to make sure everyone has a chance to eat. 

It’s easy to forget that Christmas season, for some children, can be a sad time of the year – but for the eighth straight year, the Vandel Drug Gift Giving Tree is giving downtown shoppers a chance to spread some holiday love to foster children in the area. The tree invites shoppers to pick a tag with age and gender of a child in need, and provides a short shopping list on the back. The shopper buys the gift and attaches that tag to it – and that’s all it takes to help make Christmas special for a Goshen County kid in foster care. 

“They pull the tag, then they can purchase the gift here if they want,” Michelle Douglass, Vandel Drug front end supervisor, said. “If they do, we give 10 percent off and do free gift-wrapping. If they buy it somewhere else, they can bring it back and we’ll still do free gift-wrapping. They just attach the name to the package and we make sure it gets to the right person.”

It’s a simple process, Douglass said. The gifts go around the fireplace at Vandel Drug and will be picked up by a representative from Goodwill Industries before Christmas. The gifts are guaranteed to go to children in Goshen County, and the tags get picked off the tree pretty quickly. 

“We run out of tags every year, so the community really steps up and makes sure,” Douglass said. “We got the names last Saturday, and as I was putting the tags on the tree we had people taking them off. We had people actually call and ask if we have our giving tree yet. They expect it.”

There’s another gift-giving tree at Pinnacle Bank, and Douglass said that’s where she got the idea to get involved. Vandel Drug has a wide selection of potential gifts, and that makes it a great location for a gift-giving tree. 

“That’s why I decided to do it,” she said. “I’ve seen them in other places, and I said ‘let’s do that.’ We have gifts here, and toys, and all of that stuff – I said ‘let’s do that here.’”