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Better Be Nice: Santa's Calling Pittsfield Children
By Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
07:49PM / Wednesday, December 14, 2016
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A dozen Santas spent Wednesday night calling city children to find out what they want for Christmas.


The same volunteers keep returning year after year to make the calls.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Santa's on the phone.
 
Just a little over a week before Christmas, some 125 city children will get to tell Santa what they'd like under the tree. The city's annual North Pole Calling program brings more than a dozen volunteers to City Hall to make phone calls acting as Santa Claus.
 
"We have a lot of the same volunteers and it is great to have that continued support. This is one of my favorite things to do," said Recreation Activities Coordinator Becky Manship, who heads the program.
 
The program has been going on for longer than the volunteers can remember. Each year, the city's Office of Community Development sends out letters to parents of children in Grades K-2, the parents fill out the forms with the names, interests, info on brothers sisters or pets, and even notes such as that rooms need to be cleaned. Then one night the volunteers sort out the forms and make the calls over two nights.
 
"We have 125 for both nights but we'll probably get some more tomorrow," Manship said.
 
The program doesn't really have an age limit per se. The letters go out to the younger grades but Manship doesn't turn others away.
 
"If there are still believers beyond second grade, I'm still willing to give them a call," Manship said.
 
The first round of calls this year went out Wednesday night with a dozen volunteers, many of whom have been doing it years. More than a few are city employees. The callers get into character, either Santa or Mrs. Claus. The number of children signed up is down this year, according to Manship, but those picking up the phone are just as excited as ever. Last year, about 140 children received calls.
 
The volunteers never know what they are in for, though, each with their own stories of children crying or screaming, or having interesting conversations. They never know what the kids are going to say. 
 
One year, Joe Cimini called a home expecting to speak to just a couple children but there were guests over that night and he ended taking the wishes of nearly a dozen. Bill Knowles still tells the story of when he called a 9-year-old girl who said she wanted to become a marine biologist but couldn't because she was a girl. Knowles didn't like that response and told her that, yes, she most certainly can become a marine biologist if she works hard in school and he told her not to let anyone say she couldn't. Police Chief Michael Wynn once called a child from a classroom he visited that day. And the child called him out on it.
 
But the volunteers keep returning, stationing themselves in the same seats from the year before and making up their own interesting stories and questions, and telling elaborate tales of what the reindeer are doing.