Andrea DaCosta bounced 2-year-old Jeremias on her hip at the Catholic Charities Teen Center at St. Peter’s in Dorchester on Saturday.
Bundled up for the frigid weather, Jeremias watched a video on his mother’s phone while DaCosta, 49, helped direct a cadre of teenage toy drive volunteers, who carried a bag of gifts, Christmas desserts, and a small bike out of the building.
The 29th annual toy drive, a Christmas Eve tradition started by late Boston mayor Thomas Menino in 1993, was one of a number of events across the city Saturday aimed at giving back to the community during a year where many families across the Commonwealth felt the squeeze of rising costs due to inflation.
“This is such a blessing to our family. We look forward to it,” said DaCosta, who has two older children and works as a custodian for Boston Public Schools. “[My kids] can smile and know that someone else cares.”
For the last five years, DaCosta, who lives in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood, has been coming to the annual toy drive.
Menino’s widow, Angela Menino, said Saturday that she remembers her late husband coming home from the event “just beaming.” For him, she said the joy lasted all year.
“It rejuvenated him,” Angela told the Globe. “When he could spend time with the children, it really made him feel good. . . . He wanted to come here and make sure the people in the neighborhood knew he would be there for them. That is why he continued to come each year. To say ‘yes, I’m here.’”
The Menino tradition lives on through the late mayor’s family and friends. Angela, as well as the Menino children and grandchildren, helped pass out bags full of toys and arrange packages of pies, hot chocolate, and candy canes for families who stopped by. A large section of the center of the building was devoted to bikes of all shapes and sizes — shiny silver mountain bikes, blue cruisers with tinsel handlebar streamers, and tiny, baby pink tricycles.
Volunteers in green aprons that read “Menino’s Elves” helped haul the gifts into carts and car trunks outside.
This year, as higher energy and food costs continue to squeeze Americans’ pocketbooks, roughly 300 families and more than 1,000 children were expected to come through to the annual Christmas Eve event.
Gabriella Barbosa, 42, gathered bags of gifts for her four children, aged 6 to 19. Her son, 12-year-old Isaac, unwrapped a basketball and looked up at his mother.
“You have to be grateful,” she said. “A lot of kids don’t have anything.”
The Menino family tradition, which operates with donations and support of the Catholic Charities Teen Center and the families it serves, drew Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley from the Boston Archdiocese and Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox to the event, where they mingled with families and helped hand out bags of toys.
Later, O’Malley joined executive director Lyndia Downie at the Pine Street Inn as part of an another annual Christmas Eve celebration. There, carolers from local group Ripples of Hope, some donning Santa hats and jingle bells, filled the Inn’s lobby with music — a rendition of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” — before O’Malley addressed the crowd.
He thanked the staff, volunteers, and benefactors at the Boston shelter for their work in addressing the persistence of homelessness in the city.
He said the cold weather highlights “just how vulnerable people are and how much at risk they are . . . but this is not just a problem at Christmas time. This is a challenge that people [face] all year round.”
O’Malley said while there are many reasons for homelessness, he used the opportunity to highlight the lack of affordable housing in Boston.
“So many people may be working full time when they’re still homeless,” he said. “As a community, we need to come together to find real solutions.”
In the last few years, the Pine Street Inn, which is one of the largest homeless shelters in New England, has shifted its focus from solely running shelters to helping people move into permanent housing.
This year marked the first time in two years that the Inn has had volunteers back on site to make the day joyous and festive, Downie said.
Two of the returning volunteers were Jim and Linda Morse, who have been helping at the Inn for more than two decades.
“Personally,” Linda Morse said, “I think this work is some of the most important work I’ve ever done.”
Morse, gesturing to the room, said the ultimate goal is moving people “out of here.”
She then pointed to a Pine Tree Inn sign that read “Permanent Housing.”
“And into there,” she added.
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Jesús Marrero Suárez can be reached at jesus.marrerosuarez@globe.com. Follow him @jmarrerosuarez.