Clickmas Christmas food drive family in Crystal Lake asks public to stop by, drop off food

Last year, Jacci Richards-Click and her husband, Dan Click, collected two pickup trucks full of food donations for the Family Health Partnership Clinic.

This season, nary a box of food has been dropped off at the Clickmas Christmas lights display at 401 W. Woodstock St. in Crystal Lake.

For whatever reason, and they are not sure why, the parade of cars that for the past 30 or so years has driven past their house to see the holiday lights have not shown up this year. Neither have the food donations they began requesting two years ago, Richards-Click said.

In a play off their last name, they call the display and corresponding donation drive “Clickmas.”

“With 50,000 to 70,000 lights or so, it is hard for people to not slow down and take a look,” she said.

The lights shine on a 17-foot-tall Santa, a sleigh and all the reindeer, including Rudolph, and a host of other holiday characters.

It isn’t unusual to have 100 or more cars drive past their house on a weeknight to look at the display, Richards-Click said.

Until this year.

“We have had maybe 50 groups since Thanksgiving out walking around” to take a look at the display. That also means fewer people have dropped off grocery items for the food pantry at the clinic, which serves the un- and underinsured, she said.

As of Tuesday, the Clicks had only 20 items in the donation box in the driveway since Thanksgiving.

It may be the lack of snow this year that kept people away, Richards-Click said. Or it might be gas prices.

“If you think about it, gas prices are crazy. Are you going to spend an hour or two driving through Crystal Lake and McHenry County? That is an expense” for someone who doesn’t otherwise want to drive, she said.

There has been one bright spot in the donations. Another tenant in the building her nonprofit is housed at heard about her food drive and dropped off food.

Nabil Merza is an insurance adjuster for DGB Adjuster Inc. and works for a roofing company. The landlord told him about what Richards-Click and her volunteer group, Fisher Outreach Group Inc., does in the community.

Earlier this year, he bought $500 in gift cards to Walmart, Target and Walgreens to help older residents pay for their prescription drugs as part of the adopt-a-grandparent program. This week, he and his wife bought groceries for the clinic’s food drive and dropped them off at Fisher Outreach Group.

“I have been where these people are” and struggling to make ends meet, Merza said. “Now I have a good job and a roof over my head.”

He plans to include Fisher Outreach Group in his future charity donations while continuing to give to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.

The Clicks plan to keep the lights on at their home from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m. through New Year’s Eve. The donation box for nonperishable food items also will be out.

As Fisher Outreach Group has not yet gotten nonprofit status from the IRS, Richards-Click said they are not seeking cash donations.