Christmas came early in Flatbush this year.
Santa took a break from the chaos at the North Pole to deliver joy and toys to kids at PS 249 on Dec. 19. Kids were thrilled to see St. Nick, and at least one child could hardly contain his Yuletide spirit, a parent said.
“When he was called up to get his present, he started jumping up and down and getting excited,” parent Zina said of her son A.J. “He was the happiest one there when he got his gift.”
All told, 500 kids turned out for the delivery — an annual tradition that Councilman Mathieu Eugene (D–Flatbush) sponsors — to receive gifts that community members and local organizations donated over the past month.
The toy drop went off without a hitch — organizers separated kids by age and gender and gave them gift tickets — when their numbers came up, the tots got to meet Kris Kringle himself. And to cap it all off, McDonald’s, Dominos, and La Baguette treated the kids to lunch.
Zina said she is making her son wait until Christmas to unwrap his present, but one of his peers couldn’t hold off until the big day and peeled back the paper to reveal a Transformer action figure, according to his dad.
“He was so happy and excited,” Kennick Demesvar said of his second-grader, Dave. “He really loved it.”
But the best gift of all may have been the grins plastered across kids’ faces as Santa handed them their gifts, according to Eugene’s head staffer.
“Just seeing how excited the children were when they came to get their toys was a very heartwarming thing for the council member and for everybody who works the event,” said Eugene’s chief of staff David Suarez.
