Everyone needs a little Christmas this time of year. If you’re a little short, don’t worry: The Evening Sun delivers. That’s right, our Delivering Christmas series is back.

For those of you who don’t remember this series from last year (too much eggnog can be the only excuse), let me recap.

The idea was born as we brainstormed for float ideas in preparation for the annual Parade of Lights. Our Delivering Christmas theme was such a success - it won us first place in the parade - that we decided to continue the effort through the holiday season.

Throughout the month of December, we featured a Delivering Christmas story each day highlighting a group or event working to help others during the holidays. And we didn’t just write about these efforts, we pitched in. By sorting clothes, baking cookies, serving meals and anything else we were asked to do.

We also took our prize money from the parade (did I mention we took first place?) and used the majority of it to purchase books for Toys for Tots. OK, so we used some of the money to buy lunch, but I swear that the majority of it went to books.

The series was definitely a success. It was popular with our readers, the organizations we reached out to were happy for our support and, for me at least, it served as a reminder of what this season is truly about - the spirit of giving.

I know my co-workers will agree with me on that, because, even though we are short-staffed at the moment, we decided we had to continue Delivering Christmas this year.

That’s right. We’ll once again be making our rounds of do-gooding organizations, resplendent in our signature green aprons, jaunty Santa hats and scarves handcrafted by former ES reporter Jessica Lewis. And for the record, we prefer to be called “Santa’s Helpers.” Not elves.

We’d appreciate it if you didn’t point and laugh when you see us. We are, after all, trying to do good.

We don’t have the manpower, unfortunately, to make the series a daily feature, but Delivering stories will appear every Tuesday and Thursday from now until Christmas. In fact, our first installment appears today, chronicling Tyler Murphy’s day literally delivering with Meals on Wheels.

We missed having a float this year. (Although, in retrospect that may have been a good thing. What with spontaneous combustion and all.) But we’re going to continue helping Toys for Tots. In fact, we’re kicking it up a notch.

Earlier this month, as I was gathering information on the annual toy drive I had a conversation with Melinda Mandeville from Roots & Wings, which coordinates sorting and distributing the items collected during the Toys for Tots campaign. She told me that each child receives a book along with their toys, and mentioned that books were one of the things they always fall short on.