This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.

In 1975, the Christmas store was founded and has been giving out presents to those

in need ever since. Jonathan Maddox of the Oxford Ole Miss Rotary Club is co-chairman of the

Christmas store and he's here to share this beautiful annual event about an hour south of Memphis.

Here's Jonathan. The Christmas store is a community-based

volunteer organization that gives toys to children in our community who otherwise might not have

anything for Christmas. In 2007, when the Rotary Club of Oxford Ole Miss was forming and looking for a signature

project, the Christmas store seemed like a good place for us to plug in and volunteer.

I joined the Rotary Club because I wanted to be able to make a difference.

And so when this project was brought to the club's attention, everyone really thought this was a great chance for us to really give back to those in our community.

Little do we know at the time that we would be taking over the Christmas store.

And for the past 14 years, we have been the stewards of this annual event.

For years before our involvement in the Christmas store, people would shop throughout

the year and just amass a big pile of toys and it truly was a store.

And families were invited to come in and select a couple of toys for each of their children.

When we became involved in the store, it became a period that there was always that certain

toy that they could never have enough of. It would be the one that they would set out and

everyone would want to grab that one first, and anyone who came later maybe didn't have the

opportunity to get that thing for that year. So we said, why not just buy the toys that the

people want in the first place? And that led to a whole

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