At its best, Christmastime brings a spirit of selflessness to our communities. To celebrate the holidays and the generosity that often defines this time of year, The Ticker touched base with some of the (many) local businesses and organizations that have made giving back a core part of their end-of-the-year traditions.

For some businesses, the Christmas spirit kicks in a month or more before Christmas itself. Such is the case with 7 Monks Taproom, which for years has made charitable giving a key part of its Thanksgiving week celebrations. This year marked the pub’s 13th Annual Black Friday Tap Feature & Membership Drive. That event not only populates the beer list at 7 Monks with a variety of rare porters, stouts, and other dark beers, but also offers up discounted lifetime memberships to the Friar's Union (the 7 Monks beer club) and donates 100 percent of the proceeds to a charity. Over the years, the Black Friday event has raised thousands of dollars for organizations like the Father Fred Foundation, Acorn Health, Toys for Tots, and more.

Per 7 Monks Owner Matt Cozzens, this year’s membership drive raised $2,300 for the St. Clair Butterfly Foundation, an organization that works “to help traumatized youth overcome adversity through expressive arts programs and provide trauma-informed training for educators.”

Other local businesses give back by helping usher in the Christmas season. According to Tonya Wildfong, director of marketing and communications for Team Elmer’s, 2023 marks the 44th year the business has been “helping bring Christmas to downtown Traverse City.” Elmer’s donates the equipment and crew labor necessary to mount Traverse City’s beloved downtown tree, as well as to put Santa’s House in its place at Rotary Square. Those are both heavy undertakings – literally! Wildfong says Santa’s House weighs 1,500 pounds, while the downtown tree typically weighs in around 3,200 pounds.

Elmer’s also donates the crane and crew for the CherryT Ball Drop New Year’s celebration, which itself raises money for a local charity. The event’s host – the Festival Foundation – has announced the Father Fred Foundation as this year’s New Year's Eve donation recipient.

Father Fred tens to be an especially common beneficiary of holiday season charity efforts in northern Michigan. Team Bob’s, for instance, has a 20-plus-year partnership with Father Fred, sponsoring two of the nonprofit’s events every year – the Frostbite Food Drive in February and the Father Fred Coat Drive in November – and raising money for the organization throughout the holidays. This year, during the first 12 days of December, Team Bob’s ran a “12 Days of Christmas promotion,” where it offered discounts to customers and matched those discounts with monetary donations to Father Fred. According to Danielle Pasinski, VP of service and administration for Team Bob’s, the company raised over $4,000 in that period – part of the $40,000 in “contributions to various causes” it tallied in 2023 alone.

Also helping out with Father Fred this Christmas is Hagerty, which has a community impact program – Hagerty CARes – that encourages employees to volunteer with local charities. In 2023, Hagerty CARes volunteers packed 3,372 backpacks for the Blessings in a Backpack effort at Father Fred, including 1,032 during the holiday season alone. Blessings in a Backpack is a national nonprofit that distributes backpacks full of nonperishable food to school-aged children who are “hunger-insecure.”

Per Andy Heller, Hagerty’s director of executive communications, the company also adopted the Christmas lists of 100 students in need at Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS), delivering Christmas gifts to those students last Friday.

Rather than picking just one cause to support, Ford Insurance Agency does an “annual day of giving” where it gives back to five. Account Executive Madison Ford says the goal is to find nonprofits “who we recognize make great impacts in our community and where we personally feel connection to their missions.”

“To start the day, a large crew of us took a morning to help pack 2,500 lunches for hungry kids with the team at Project Feed the Kids – and to learn more about their journey to give over free 300,000 meals to northern Michigan children in just three years,” Ford says. “From there, a couple of us went out to Addiction Treatment Services, Father Fred, Cherryland Humane Society, and United Way of Northwest Michigan to acknowledge the people who do the work. We shared holiday cheer from Great Lakes Chocolates and donated $1,000 to each organization.”

Speaking of Project Feed the Kids, that local organization is another popular charitable cause – especially around Christmas, when the nonprofit adds an “adopt a family” program to the mix. Founded by Tiffany and Jason McQueer, who also own J&S Hamburg South in Traverse City, Project Feed the Kids raises funds each Christmas to make the holidays more special for families in need. The idea started within the McQueer family: “We have six kids, and every other Christmas, we would get our kids one small gift each and then adopt a family of the same size as ours for the holidays,” Tiffany explains. “We’d give each of our kids a budget, and then they’d shop for a child that was around their age.”

That idea, of making Christmas magic a reality for less fortunate kids and their families, got folded into Project Feed the Kids when the organization launched in 2020. Since then, the process – of building a list of families, collecting wishlists, raising funds, buying gifts, and getting everything where it needs to go – has grown into a six-week logistical lift. “Our first year of adopting families, we adopted 126,” McQueer shares. “The second year, we adopted 433. Last year, we adopted 730. And this year, we will be over 900 families.”

Even beyond Father Fred and Project Feed the Kids, though, northern Michigan’s business community proves there are countless ways to be generous around the holidays. In that spirit, we’d be remiss not to mention a few more…

Precision Plumbing and Heating Systems observes the annual holiday tradition of giving brand-new, fully-installed furnace system to a family in need. TC Queen Bees, a catering and food truck company, worked to organize a December 23 Christmas event for the local homeless population. The Elk Rapids-based Mi Family Chiropractic sent out 30 “HeroBoxes” to deployed military service people, getting patients involved to fill the boxes with goodies that people serving overseas had put on their wishlists. Traverse City Beauty College held a “Haircuts for the Holidays” event earlier this month, where it gave over 60 free haircuts to local community members. And finally, tomorrow, for Christmas Day itself, Bergstrom’s Burgers will be offering a free buffet-style dinner “for those who have nowhere to go for Christmas or have limitations.”