Buddy Cox is the first to admit that the Country Santa program is much bigger than one man. And it’s much bigger than the hundreds of volunteers that show up day after day with toys in hand to pack bags for hundreds of needy families.
Country Santa Buddy Cox checks his list with two of his helpers.“It’s been in God’s hands since day one,” he said.
Cox has been working tirelessly for the past 29 years to get toys into the hands and hearts of needy children across the Upstate. The program grew from helping one child to more than 2,700 last year. His workshop in Pumpkintown, on a good day, is packed to the gills with donated toys. And the volunteers he fondly refers to as elves have to be forced to take a lunch break and are shooed away at nighttime. Some even refer to working in Country Santa’s workshop as an addiction.
“I think everyone wants to believe in the spirit of Christmas. When people come up here, it’s almost as if they get to feel it again,” Cox said. “We try to put the true meaning of Christmas back into Christmas.”
The Country Santa program works something like this. People donate new toys or money to Country Santa, either by mail, bringing donations to the workshop or bringing toys to one of the many drop sites at churches and businesses throughout the Upstate. The toys are sorted by volunteers and stacked on the shelves of the workshop.
Volunteers are then given a sheet of paper with children and their ages and a black Hefty bag, and set about the task of choosing $50 in toys for each child and loading them in the bag. As Bibles are available, they are placed in the bags along with all the goodies. They then slip a red piece of paper into the bag that reads, “With love from Jesus and Country Santa.”
The bag is then sealed and labeled with duct tape (two miles of duct tape were used last year) and moved to a storage building, where it will sit until Dec. 23. Volunteers will then line up the bags and get ready for Christmas Eve morning, when even more volunteers will line up early in the morning for the opportunity to personally put these bags into the hands of children.
“What we try to do is really let them understand when they open the bags what the true purpose of this is. The toys are almost secondary. The toys let these kids know we care. What it does is give these kids hope,” Cox said. “I never want to commercialize this by giving toys. I don’t like that part of Christmas. But what better time to reach out to needy kids than at Christmas time and to show them the love that is explained in the Bible.”
Cox is so committed to the cause that every year he shuts down his business for the month of December so that he can spend 12 hours a day – or more – being Country Santa.
“We couldn’t do it without our faith. Our faith is what gets us through this non-ending event now through Dec. 24,” he said. “It’s a heavy burden to carry, that you are there to lift up the spirit of this many kids.”
While Cox said Country Santa is not promoted by any one religious or secular organization, he said his background as a Baptist has had a big impact on how he runs the program.
“We have no problem spreading the Word, and we do it in a discreet way. We don’t try to overpower people,” he said. “The guidelines of the Bible – be of good cheer, do unto others as you would have them do unto you – it should be every Christian’s urge to do that, to help your fellow man. Faith without works is dead.”
Cox said the long hours involved with being Country Santa can wear on both the body and the spirit.
“It’s hard, bone-crunching work. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a magical moment drops into your lap. To me, those are the battery chargers that recharge me; it’s not the plaques on the wall,” he said. “You can’t accomplish these things without the miracles of Christmas, and you can’t accomplish this without the strength of that faith.”
Cox said he gets a front-seat view of Christmas miracles over and over. Several years ago after putting in a full day on Christmas Eve making sure toys were delivered to hundreds of children, he decided to make one last stop to check his post office box at around 6 p.m.
“I thought I had pretty much completed my project for the year,” he said.
When he peered into the box, he found a single letter from a man in a federal prison in California. The man was dying and because of his condition, they wouldn’t allow his two young daughters to visit. His only wish was to get teddy bears to his girls so that they would know their daddy loved them.
“I could not put that letter down and walk away from it,” Cox said. “That one letter just burned into me.”
So he took the letter to the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office and asked for help in granting this man’s wish. The deputies on duty made a call to the authorities in California and explained the situation. The California authorities said they would get teddy bears to the little girls that night with the message that their daddy loved them very much.
“We reached out all the way across the country from one end to the other,” Cox said. “To me, sometimes it’s not the destination, it’s the journey that counts. It’s not the numbers; it’s the effort. Our hearts are right no matter how large the numbers. That’s what it’s all about.”