The most wonderful time of the year

Project Santa. Dorm parties. The Snowball Dance. A Christmas Sing. Poinsettia sales. Football in the snow. Christmas music on WGLS. When winter and its holidays come to campus, they have always been as festive and fun—and frenzied—as can be when you have one eye on finals and the other on frolic. As this collection of photos and memorabilia show, the campus family has always managed to celebrate the joys of the season and share with those less fortunate. Part of holiday history now, these happy times are worth remembering.

The annual Christmas Sing featured carols from around the world, narrations and performances by the Glee Club, class soloists, faculty and the orchestra. With an admonition about reserving seats, this ticket from 1937 suggests the popularity of the event held in what we now call Bunce Hall’s Tohill Auditorium. Probably due equally to frugality and the creativity of teachers in training, students decorated construction paper covers by hand to enclose each printed program.

The evening of December 2, 1932 left no rest for weary feet for the owner of this Glassboro Normal dance card. In it, the young lady recorded the partners she had scheduled for each round of the Eskimo Dance. In an era when propriety and decorum were paramount, the dance card helped keep even festive socials orderly. Using the attached pencil with perfect penmanship, the coed wrote “Charles” four times out of 10 opportunities. In what must be Charles’ hand, he also claimed four more dances, once crossing out the name of a would-be partner, “Marion S.” The night included dances called the Kyak Float, the Northern Light Waltz and the Ice-o-therm.

This Christmas card from President Robinson, Dean Bole, Grace Bagg and others spoke warmly of the joys of the Christmas season and their significance for the future teachers (who still made up the whole of the student body). Inside, it says, “Symbolized by Christmas is the teacher’s true mission of life—the giving of knowledge and the creation of an awareness that through awe, sympathy and love, truths can be found which reason can never explain.”

The Class of ’66 started Project Santa when they were freshmen, providing baskets of food to needy families and toys for children in hospitals. (The Glassboro Whit published this cartoon in its December 3, 1965 issue.) By the time they were seniors, Project Santa included gifts for civilians in Vietnam and since then has supported dozens of charities near and far. Renamed “Holiday Helper” to be politically correct, the four-decade-old tradition of giving still offers students and the campus community the chance to meet needs of those less fortunate. Student Center staffer Nancy Fox recalls a once-destitute mother who called years after Project Santa had given her family the Christmas tree and gifts that she couldn’t. With a tearful joy, she called GSC to say that she and her employer, Mobil, had elected to support Project Santa that year.