Empty Stocking Fund ornaments proving to be popular
Published Saturday November 7th, 2009
SAINT JOHN - There's still an opportunity Monday to purchase a limited number of Empty Stocking Fund pewter ornaments.
The last few hundred will be arriving for sale Monday morning at 8:30 a.m., after which the mould will be broken.
On Friday morning, as the Telegraph-Journal office opened, about 50 people were waiting in the foyer to buy the limited-edition piece of art. They had their ornaments within 14 minutes and, by noon, all available ornaments had been sold.
By mid-afternoon, 1,400 ornaments had been spoken for, many of which had been pre-paid after the ornaments available on site sold out.
Jillian Carr took her lunch break on Friday to drive from Hampton to pick up two pewter ornaments for her mother, Candace, who lives in Sussex.
"Who-hoo!" she yelled, ornaments in hand as she left the building.
"My mother grew up on Duke Street and it's still a tradition in our house.
"I called and they said they were going fast, so I rushed in."
Paul Desjardins purchased eight of the last dozen that were available on Friday.
"My wife sent me to buy four for her and four for her friend at work," Desjardins said.
"Three of our kids performed at the Empty Stocking Fund, so we have one for ourselves and one for each of them."
The first-ever limited edition ornament depicts two children dressed in thread-bare clothes, staring at a Christmas display of toys in a store window - toys that the rag-a-muffins did not dare dream of owning. Their image represented the annual Empty Stocking Fund appeal for decades.
Packaged with each ornament is the story of how Harry (Dutch) Ervin, a newspaper reporter who worked nearly 100 years ago, saw the children and passed the hat, beginning one of the oldest newspaper-sponsored Christmas appeals in Canada.
Sales are cash only, with all proceeds going to the Empty Stocking Fund.
The newspaper office, at 210 Crown Street, is open until 5 p.m. on Monday. It is located at 210 Crown Street and is the only venue selling the ornament.
They are $10 each, HST included. Only 2,000 have been cast.
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