For Sparky (Corkin) Kennedy ’75 and her family, a desire to share the holiday spirit with others has brought comfort and joy to thousands of Boston-area families experiencing homelessness and poverty

On Christmas morning in 1988, Sparky (Corkin) Kennedy ’75 and her late husband, Jake, were home in Scituate, Massachusetts, celebrating with their young family. They couldn’t help but notice the abundance. “I had a privileged life, and so did Jake, and we were giving that to our kids,” says Sparky. “They didn’t have to worry about anything.” They started to talk about all the children who weren’t as lucky and wondered, too, whether their own kids were experiencing the true spirit of the season.

By the time the next holiday rolled around, Jake and Sparky had founded Christmas in the City, an all-volunteer organization serving families in homeless shelters around Boston. It has offered many services over the last 36 years—from job fairs to college scholarships to Thanksgiving turkey giveaways—but it’s best known for the many enormous holiday parties that volunteers threw in major venues, from City Hall to the Boston Convention Center, for shelter residents. As many as 4,000 people would attend. Each child would receive a special toy that they had requested from Santa.

The goal of each holiday event was to create a magical moment for children. “I have so many great memories of the parties,” Zack, the second oldest Kennedy sibling, remembers. “Like the moment my dad would pass the microphone off to Santa Claus, who would open Winter Wonderland. This massive red curtain would lift and reveal a carnival, with blow-up rides and carousels, ponies and face painting and Santa booths. All the kids would line up at the curtain and rush in. It was the coolest thing.”

Jake and Sparky worked year-round, raising money, coordinating with the shelters, collecting toys, partnering with restaurants and caterers, chartering buses, hiring costume characters, and recruiting as many as a thousand volunteers. Once they were old enough, all four Kennedy kids pitched in, too. “My dad was this larger-than-life figure,” says Zack. “He was a dreamer. It was my mom, though, who did the legwork. She and an army of volunteers. My mom and dad were such a great team. They really worked in lockstep. Christmas in the City is a Boston institution.”

When Jake became ill with ALS in 2019, Chip—the youngest Kennedy—stepped in to take over Christmas in the City so that Sparky could care for Jake fulltime. He died only a year later. Despite their grief—and the pandemic lockdown—the children rallied around Sparky to keep the organization going, as did volunteers, many of whom had been with them for decades. They started Christmas in the City Delivered, bringing meals and toys directly to the shelters.

“Now my generation of volunteers is saying, OK, we’ve been doing this for more than 30 years,” says Sparky. “We’re going to step down. The younger group has come in and they’re running the show. They have the right skills.” Today, she is still a Christmas in the City volunteer, just not at the same warp speed, and she’s busy as the owner of Kennedy Brothers Physical Therapy, the practice that Jake and one of his brothers started in the 1980s.

Last year, Zack, who’s a research scientist specializing in RNA technology in Cambridge, took the reins from Chip. He and the other volunteers—many of whom are, like him, second generation—have big plans for this year that include delivering 50 parties to 50 shelters over two weekends. The importance of doing this work really hit home for him years ago, though, when he got to chatting in line with a stranger at a Seven-11 in Mission Hill. Zack mentioned something about Christmas in the City. “Oh, yeah,” replied the man. “I went to Christmas in the City as a kid. It was the best night of my life.”

To find out more about Christmas in the City, visit christmasinthecity.org.

How Sparky Got Her Name

Sparky’s classmates will remember her as Patricia, or Patty, Corkin. She got her nickname from her late husband, Jake, when she was 21, right after they first met. They were playing around one day, and he was teaching her some boxing moves, showing her how to hold her hands. “He said teasingly, ‘We’re going to call you Sparky Parker,’” she explains, “‘and then when you get famous, that will be your boxing name.’” And from that day on, the name stuck.