When Christopher John Cornish, better known at “CJ”, arrived home from work last Thursday (Dec. 16), he found something that almost brought he and his wife to tears.
Sitting on his doorstep next to his weekly copy of The Free Press was a Christmas card with a pair of Hershey’s Kisses chocolates.
“Merry Christmas!” the front of the card read. Inside was written “From: Anna”, with a drawing of Santa Claus.
“My wife and I were almost in tears, we thought it was absolutely adorable,” Cornish said.
Curious to see if his neighbours had also received cards (several of them had), Cornish followed the tracks of the mystery card-carrier, and found that the footprints weren’t on the snow-cleared paths, but rather through the about metre of snow on the home yards.
“She jumped through the snow, kind of like a bunny, going through all the deep parts, going from house to house. That’s when of course we realized this was quite an ambitious, very young lady, who loved to play in the snow, as well as she’s doing her job.”
Cornish and his wife, Sandy Ibarra, were so touched by the Christmas gesture, that they decided to post on Facebook inquiring after the mysterious Anna.
“My wife wanted to make her a toque and a scarf and some mittens, which she loves to make, as a Christmas gift for Anna, to return that wonderful holiday spirit that she had shown.”
Through Facebook, he got in touch with seven-year-old Anna’s mother, Katya Choroszewski.
Choroszewski was with her young daughter that night as she trotted through 3rd Ave. and half of 2nd Ave. doing her paper-delivery route. She delivered 55 papers that night, and 55 people received a card from Anna.
Her nine-year-old brother Tim was up to the same thing in the Annex. He delivered 60 papers with cards.
The Christmas initiative was Choroszewski’s idea. Last year, only Tim was delivering papers in the family. In an effort to instill values of kindness, Choroszewski suggested that Tim include Christmas cards with his deliveries. They were store bought and signed by young Tim.
The cards were well received, so they continued this year, this time including Anna, who began delivering papers around April.
This year, they were all hand-drawn. It took Anna a couple of weeks to do them all.
“I just said, make some cards. And from there, Anna really went above and beyond,” Choroszewski said.
“I was kind of blown away by the fact that each card was just different. She’d put detail in on the front cover, the inside, cute little messages. And that really, entirely came from her.”
She said she could see the changes in peoples’ demeanour when they received the card from Anna. At first, they would just say thanks for the paper. But once they saw that there was a card, a new smile came to their face.
“I saw it soften people, even in that brief second of interaction.”
Little Anna spoke to The Free Press, and said she enjoyed making and delivering the cards.
“It’s nice to do something nice… because it’s Christmas time.”