PBH Unveils Plans for Annual Christmas Party

Today, a week and a half in advance of the Yuletide season, the Social Services Committees of Phillips Brooks House is already making plans to give a Christmas to scores of local youngsters who haven't much reason to believe in a Santa Claus.

The Committee has announced that its annual Yuletide festivities for Cambridge waifs will be held at PBH at 3:30. p.m. Friday, December 16. As yet no one has been selected to play Santa, but the Committee anticipates little trouble in finding the right man for the job and less trouble getting volunteers.

Glee Club and Band

In the evening of the same day, the Glee Club and the Band will get together on the stage of the Rindge Tech auditorium at 8 p.m. to present their annual contribution--a concert for the partygoers and also for the settlement house children.

The difference between a Brooks House Christmas party and the ordinary social work done by the committee, according to PBH secretary, Charles W. Duhig '29, is largely in the source of the children entertained. Usually parties and instruction groups take place in settlement houses in the poorer districts of Boston, Cambridge, and surrounding areas. Because of this, a great number of poor Cambridge gamins, many of whom are children of parents on relief, and who do not belong to one of the settlement houses, go without holiday celebrations.

Benefit from Fund

But in 1897, a fund was established to the memory of John W. and Belinda Randall "to benefit the poor of Cambridge." Thus, every year at Christmas and Thanksgiving, the Social Services Committee is obliged, and quite happy, to delve into what Duhig refers to as "part of the Harvard $177,000,000," for their biggest entertaining tasks of the year.

While games, songs, magicians, and refreshments are a feature of every Brooks House splurge, Christmas means presents, and the committee has a distinctive manner of handling this, too. Every guest will head homeward after the party with not, one, but two gifts from Santa Claus '49--one a badly needed article of clothing, specified by the parents, and the other a useless toy, which the child is expected, if he runs true to form, to value much more highly.

Christmas Carols and Santa Claus will be nine days early, but it's better than never.