It’s Giving Tuesday. What makes people give?

Community

“I never, ever forgot about Globe Santa.”

Many words have been written and much data collected about why people give to charity. Giving Tuesday may well be the “giving-est” day of the year, and so the question is worth reflecting on.

A recent survey, by Charities Aid Foundation America, identified six reasons that motivate people to donate money: To set an example for others. Because they felt guilty saying “no”. Because it’s just expected. Because it’s our duty to give to charity. Because religion encourages it. To support the local community.

Globe Santa hears all these reasons (except, happily, the one about feeling guilty saying “no”.) When donors write to Globe Santa, they typically express empathy for struggling families, and gratitude for their own good fortune in life. As one donor wrote in an email this year: “I’m so very fortunate and so many are not. It’s the least I/we can do.”

But many people donate to Globe Santa for a reason that’s unique to this charity, one that would never show up on any survey. They want to give because they themselves were Globe Santa recipients as kids. And they remember how much that big box landing on their doorstep transformed a potentially dismal time of year into something indelible.

“My sister and I were Globe Santa recipients, back in 1964,” Stephen Factor of Hyde Park emailed Globe Santa this year. “I never, ever forgot about Globe Santa.”

Factor was born in 1956, the same year the Globe Santa program started. His father was “not a stable man mentally,” he said in an interview, and after his parents divorced, Factor moved with his mother and sister to the Franklin Field housing developments in Dorchester. “It was tough, mostly for my mother,” he said. “She would always fly off the handle. I got the brunt of that.”

His memories of those years are hazy. He vaguely recalls the family was on welfare and that his mother had no money for presents. But he distinctly remembers that Globe Santa brought gifts to his sister and himself.

“One thing I’ll never forget is what it was like to feel like as a kid; I’m very, very sensitive to kids’ needs,” he said. “Kids want things, too. They watch TV. They dream. And then they go back to school [after Christmas] and they hear ‘I got this’ and kids are showing everyone their new laptop. And then there’s this poor kid who didn’t get anything.”

His philosophy is that “life is about doing the best you can and taking some time to help others whenever you can. Donating to Globe Santa is one of the things I do that puts a smile on my face this time of year, and hopefully others do too. “

Mary Ann Sperandio, 75, a retired school teacher living in Franklin, was also a Globe Santa recipient.

She grew up in housing developments in Jamaica Plain with her mother, sister and brother. Her father was out of the picture, she said in an interview. “My mother left my father when I was three because he’d beaten her up nonstop for seven years.”

She describes a childhood spent in cheerless surroundings. They had no car. No telephone. When she was seven years old, she saw her first gun. (“It was domestic abuse outside our window. The man was waving a gun because his wife had left.”) She acquired the knack of getting herself to school without being beaten up by gangs.

At Christmastime, her mother tried to compensate for their meager means by filling red mesh stockings with oranges and candy bars, and hanging them from the doorknobs. But young Mary Ann saw right through this ploy.

“I knew it was from her because Santa doesn’t give out oranges,” she remembers thinking. “Why would he give me an orange and a candy bar?” Also, she knew from watching TV that Santa came down the chimney and put presents under a tree.

“Does Santa just go to rich people’s houses?” she’d ask her mother. “Is it because we’re poor?” Her mother told her it was because they didn’t have a chimney.

But Globe Santa came to their house, with the intervention of a social worker. “I knew the presents were coming from the Boston Globe, but I didn’t care,” she said. “I knew Globe Santa was a charitable foundation for poor kids. I knew that at a very young age. But I was just happy to get the big box.”

Among the gifts Globe Santa delivered to her home was a jewelry-making kit with “little tiny plastic beads in different shapes that fit one into the other.” She coveted it, as she did the metal roller skates Globe Santa brought “that you put under your shoes with a key to tighten them. Zipped all through the projects on them.” They also got paper dolls and games like Checkers, Pick-Up Sticks, and Jacks.

“Every year we waited for that box,” she said. “It made such an impression.”

The deprivation of her childhood years left a deep impression. “It made me who I am today,” she said. “I really feel for the underdog.”

Happily, as the years went on, her family’s situation improved greatly. Sperandio taught school, mainly 7th grade, for more than 30 years. As for her mother, “The first half of my mother’s life was hell, and the second half was absolutely wonderful,” Sperandio said. “She was surrounded by family. She saw her grandchildren grow up.” And she became an artist, a passion she’d long wanted to indulge.

When Sperandio donated to Globe Santa this year, it was in memory of her beloved mother, Mary Boyajian, who died at the age of 96.” Sperandio sent a note accompanying her donation, saying:“When that package arrived each Xmas, it brought such joy to us. Thank you!”

Linda Matchan can be reached at [email protected]

For 70 years Globe Santa, a program of the Boston Globe Foundation, has provided gifts to children in need at holiday time. Please consider giving by phone, mail, or online at globesanta.org.