This year marks the 10th anniversary of my turn as The Richmond Christmas Mother, a community fundraising campaign I led that raised more than $325,000 to make the holidays a little brighter for Central Virginia families in need. It was the 80th anniversary of the Christmas Mother Fund, and I was the youngest woman—and first black woman—to helm the effort. I quipped at the time that for the last several years the committee had selected Christmas Grandmothers. (Daphne Maxwell Reid, the original Aunt Viv from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, followed me in the role in 2018.)
In retrospect, that campaign signaled a turning point—not just for the fund, but for me personally. It marked a pivotal early step in my personal transformation from community volunteer and book cheerleader to early literacy leader and parent engagement pro. The campaign added “child literacy advocate” to my name in news headlines for the first time, and it stuck. In the years since, I’ve added new titles like “author” and “parent educator” to the mix, as I’ve sharpened my understanding of what it takes to really move the needle on reading achievement.
The Christmas Mother Fund historically directed most of its support to the Salvation Army’s Christmas assistance programs. But during my tenure, we expanded its impact by launching a competitive grant project in partnership with the Community Foundation. We interpreted “Christmas” broadly to extend all the way from Thanksgiving to New Year’s and aimed to reach into 80 different pockets of the community through local organizations big and small. This allowed us to support incredible work, such as providing home-cooked meals to homebound seniors and disabled people and bringing joy to kids battling cancer.
While I did the usual hustling—placing calls, talking with media, meeting with local businesses, and presenting to civic organizations—I also put my own spin on the campaign. I donated copies of Each Kindness and other Jacquelyn Woodson books to local children at schools and child care centers. By the season’s end, I’d distributed more than 1,000 books. My Christmas Parade float, too, reflected my passion for literacy: I decked out a trolley in homage to Ezra Jack Keats’s classic picture book The Snowy Day. The marvel of art, craft, and engineering on wheels was brought to life by a dedicated team of volunteers. (Yes, we hung countless hand-cut snowflakes from the trolley windows to ensure a white Christmas.) All in the hopes of inspiring reading, encouraging parents to read to their children, and getting families to give books for Christmas instead of only toys.
Along the Dominion Energy Christmas Parade route, I tossed stuffed dolls of Peter, the main character of The Snowy Day, into the crowd. (Throwing board books into the air felt too risky.) I was joined by author friends Meg Medina, Gigi Amateau, Robin Farmer, and Stacy Hawkins Adams. At the time, I thought I might follow them into publishing fiction. Instead, I walked a different path, writing for parents and encouraging families to raise readers.
This wasn’t my first foray into advocacy. Previously, I’d launched a campaign to raise funds and awareness for Friends Association for Children, an early childhood development center that I adored and that I later highlighted in the conclusion of Reading for Our Lives. But my Christmas mother campaign gave me a platform to articulate what I now see as my core conviction: if we want to address society’s most entrenched challenges, we need to invest in children’s early education and literacy.
Looking back at a 2014 interview with Cheryl Miller on Virginia This Morning, I’m reminded of how long and deeply I’ve held this belief. All those years ago I said, “I’m a really big advocate for early childhood education programs and literacy programs for our children. I think as a community, we can invest more in children earlier and prevent a lot of the problems that many social-service organizations are grappling with as the children age.”
Some things never change! Ten years in the game and I say some version of this daily. Only now, I have the privilege of taking stages nationwide to spread the message. In 2024 alone, I addressed thousands of early childhood educators, K-12 teachers, librarians, interventionists, and parent educators in states as far-flung as Wisconsin, Louisiana, Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, Florida, and Idaho.
The Richmond Christmas Mother campaign wasn’t just a fundraiser. It was a turning point, a launchpad, and a testament to the power of a community coming together to create change. It’s been 10 years, but the lessons I learned and the momentum it sparked continue to shape the work I do today.
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