Thanksgiving at Christmas packs 2,500 meals for families in need

SELBYVILLE, Del. – Hundreds of volunteers made their way back to Mountaire in Selbyville to pack thousands of boxes for Thanksgiving at Christmas.

“It’s the community helping the community. This isn’t all the tourists we live with in the summer, this is Delawareans sticking together, I love it,” explains Eddy Sandstrom, a volunteer from Carpenters with a Cause.

Volunteers getting into the reason for the season Tuesday with Mountaire packing up 2,500 boxes filled with a delicious holiday meal.

Roger Marino of Mountaire Farms says, “Every one of these meals is like holding somebody’s hand and saying look there is help, there’s hope, we care.”

Meals that will be feeding nearly 30,000 people here on Delmarva at Christmas who might not have had one otherwise.

Marino adds, “The good thing about it is that we’re doing this, people that might not of had a holiday meal. The sad thing is that there are that many people in the world, in just our little community who are hurting and who are in need.”

It’s one of three events year round that brings the whole community together to help out their neighbors.

“It’s part of giving back. If you want to get, you better start giving you know what I mean. It all works in a circle and this is just keeping that circle going. By the grace of God next year one of us could be on the receiving end instead of the giving end you just never know,” adds Sandstrom.

The filled boxes will be going out to local churches and organizations where they’ll distribute it to local families in need.

We’re told by the time Mountaire wraps up their Thanksgiving at Easter event in April, they will have fed over one million people in the Delmarva area.

Mountaire also places a job application inside every box in hopes of giving the people that receive these meals an opportunity for a job.