Pine Level Launches Hometown Christmas, Hosts Toy Drive for Foster Children

Pine Level launched its inaugural Hometown Christmas on Dec. 9, 2025 at the Pine Level Community Center, bringing together residents, vendors, entertainers, and local youth organizations for an evening of family friendly activities and community giving. Organizers designed the event to pair a small town holiday festival with a collection of new unwrapped gifts to support foster children across Autauga County.

The Pine Level Community Center partnered with the Autauga County Technology Center’s FCCLA chapter to collect donations and staff the toy drive. Tables of vendor booths and local entertainers provided community programming while attendees placed ornaments representing their families on a set of community trees, continuing a new family trees ornament tradition intended to strengthen local ties and create a communal holiday display.

Organizers framed the project as an effort to provide tangible holiday support for vulnerable children in the county and to mirror the volunteer driven spirit that sustained Pine Level’s October Spooktacular festival. The event invited residents to contribute gifts and to participate in a broader culture of civic involvement that relies on schools, community centers, and volunteer groups.

For Autauga County residents the event serves both immediate and longer term purposes. In the short term the toy drive supplied gifts for foster children during the holiday season. In the longer term Hometown Christmas illustrates how local institutions and youth organizations mobilize to address community needs, and how volunteer efforts can become recurring civic traditions. The reliance on community organized drives also raises questions for county leaders about the adequacy of formal supports for foster children and opportunities for coordinated public private responses.

As Pine Level evaluates this first Hometown Christmas, organizers and county officials will face choices about scaling the initiative, formalizing partnerships with child welfare agencies, and tracking outcomes for the children served. The event demonstrated strong local participation and provides a model for other small towns in Autauga County seeking to combine celebration with social support.