Every Globe Santa delivery starts with a letter to St. Nick and ends with a child opening gifts on Christmas morning, but getting those toys and books to families takes a lot more than eight tiny reindeer.
Beginning in November, dozens of men and women spend the holiday season packing toys and books into large boxes and delivering the parcels to more than 35,000 children across the region.
The key to getting the right gifts to the right children is the way Mike Rossi, a mailroom foreman who leads the Globe staff and temporary workers who sort and pack the gifts, has organized the process “so that it becomes a seamless production line,’’ says Bill Connolly, the executive director of the Globe Santa operation, a program of The Boston Globe Foundation.
Deep inside the Globe’s Morrissey Boulevard building, where Globe Santa’s gift-packing line is in operation, the toys are stacked high along the sides of a space larger than a basketball court — gifts for girls on one side and those for boys on the other.
Within those two areas, the presents are further divided into items appropriate for six age groups: infants, ages 1 to 2, 3 to 4, 5 to 6, 7 to 8, and 9 to 12. Some of the toys and books are donated by partners, such as local publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Candlewick Press, but most come from the roughly 55,000 of each that Globe Santa buys from 18 to 20 vendors each spring.
Each cardboard box contains two toys and two books for each child, and a game or puzzle for each family. Some families also receive winter clothing — hats, gloves, scarves, and mittens — and school supplies. Those items were added to the Globe Santa package at the urging of Linda Pizzuti Henry, the Globe’s managing director, after her husband, John Henry, purchased the Globe in 2013.
For the workers, putting together the packages is like solving a puzzle. “It’s almost like playing Tetris,’’ Rossi says. “You’re trying to figure out what pieces fit in the best, but you’re also trying to provide good-quality toys as well.’’
The packages — there were more than 20,000 in total last year — are labeled with bar codes and stacked onto pallets and secured with plastic wrap for the next leg of their journey.
Globe truck drivers — the same people who distribute the newspaper throughout the region — take the packages to local post offices, from which postal workers deliver them to the families. The packaging and the delivery to front doors are all done in less than five weeks.
The Postal Service is the closer: “From the moment we present the boxes to the post office, they are being delivered to the households within 48 hours,’’ Rossi said.
Adds Connolly: “Local US Postal Service staff work closely with Globe Santa each year and regularly make extra efforts to ensure that every family receives its gifts and is able to celebrate the holiday. They are great partners for Globe Santa; they go through hoops and all kinds of additional work to make deliveries on time.’’
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox.
