As many people are taking down their Christmas lights and putting away the rest of their decorations, the Moose Jaw Salvation Army are looking back at the past holiday

season with smiles on their faces. 

During the last few months of the year, the Salvation Army put their fundraising efforts in high gear with the Kettle Campaign and Toy Days. 

"It was overwhelming. The Moose Jaw community was quite generous in their support of our kettles, we raised about $66,000 which is way up from our previous year at $58,000," said Major Dan Broome, with the Salvation Army. "Toy Days was again a tremendous success at Canadian Tire, we received many toys and gifts from that campaign that we were able to distribute to many families at Christmas time."

"It was a great year, we had no trouble raising the funds, the money came in. We were a little concerned with closure of the Times Herald because for years they did our stocking fund. So we were a little concerned our donations would be down this year, but I think people thought with it closing, that they would just drop their donation off in a kettle."

The money that was donated was essentially split down the middle, according to Major Broome, with half of it used during the holidays and the other half put towards future initiatives.

"The Christmas efforts generally cost us between $30,000- $35,000 a year. $30,000 of it will go towards programs and emergency assistance in 2018, all the money we receive has to last us until December 2018."

He noted that over 500 families were able to celebrate the holidays the way they had hoped for thanks to support from Moose Javians and surrounding communities.