TORONTO -- For thousands of kids around the world, going home for the holidays simply isn’t a reality.
But a group of photographers have teamed up to give hospitalized children a chance for a little Christmas magic.
With the Christmas Wish Project, photographers set up a meet-and-greet photoshoots with Santa at children’s hospitals. Unbeknownst to the families, the images are edited to look like the children are enjoying a magical experience with Old Saint Nick.
“Behind the scenes, we have a team of editors and they take the green screen photos and they edit them into beautiful, magical, wintery scenes and they send those to the family,” Erin Michalski, who is in charge of the Canadian photoshoots, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
The edited photosinclude Santa and his reindeer playing video games with a child on a snowy rooftop, Santa holding a baby in a stable and two boys riding on a polar bear in the North Pole.
Michalski said she sends the photos to the families over email, so she doesn’t get to see the recipients’ reaction, but has only received positive feedback.
“Last year we did hear back from a few families and I had parents just thanking us for the opportunity and they said they cried when they saw it,” she said. “They were just blown away by what we had done.”
The Christmas Wish Project began four years ago in Australia and has since expanded to Canada and the United States. This year, photographers were sent to the Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, Ont., the William Osler Health System in Etobicoke, Ont. and the Scarborough Hospital in Toronto.
To date, the Christmas Wish Project has delivered photos to more than 400 families, with the help of more than 200 volunteers and 60 editors.
“We’re pretty fortunate to be able to do it,” Michalski said. “When we bring them into the studio and we show them our Santa Claus just for a few minutes, it feels like they’re just regular kids.”
