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20th Annual Christmas Dinner in Scranton

SCRANTON — It’s a Christmas tradition in Scranton  spanning 20 years. Thousands of people were fed at the annual Christmas dinner hosted by business...

SCRANTON -- It's a Christmas tradition in Scranton  spanning 20 years. Thousands of people were fed at the annual Christmas dinner hosted by businessman Bob Bolus.

Every person who walks through the doors at Saint Patrick's in Scranton has a story - a story of what brought them to this Christmas dinner.

There are the volunteers, like Carmen Vega, who came all the way from New York City just to spend time with her daughter.

"We don't have any more small children, so it makes it special because we're helping people out," said Vega. "Some people that don't have family and we're their family now."

There are those here who just want to be around other people. Ethel Papa has special memories of the place on Jackson Street . It's where her daughter went to school; her daughter who passed away in 1995 at the age of 28.

"I keep wishing she was with me right now, and it makes me feel happy inside," says Papa. "I got her through school that it makes me feel like she's here with me. And I wish she was."

Joanne Dodgson has been volunteering at this dinner since the very beginning and has seen the attendance grow from just a couple dozen to hundreds and hundreds.

"It means what Christmas should mean," says Dodgson. "Not the toys, not the presents, [but] giving to people, and when you give to people, you really get it back."

"I see the people that have been coming for 15 or 20 years," says Bob Bolus, the organizer. "If we didn't have this to do, we wouldn't know what to do. This is our Christmas. It's everybody's Christmas."

A Christmas for people like Barbara Michalowski, who has made it her own tradition for the past 11 years.

"It's interesting to think there's somebody in the community that cares enough that people don't eat alone," says Michalowski.

And she's just one of the thousands of people that volunteers expect to feed this Christmas. Thousands of people, thousands of Christmas stories, all tied together over the dinner table.

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