It started with a simple idea: Be Someone’s Angel.
Penelope “Penny” LopezFounder, President & CEOOperation Holiday®
It Started With a Simple Idea: Be Someone’s Angel.
Long before Operation Holiday® had a name, a statewide reach, or thousands of people walking through the doors of an annual Christmas experience, there was an Angel Tree.
During my years in the corporate world, Christmas would arrive and so would the Angel Tree. You would choose an angel from the tree, and that person became your mission. It might be a child, a senior, a family struggling to make ends meet, or someone without a home. For a little while, you had the opportunity to step into the life of someone you might never meet and make their Christmas a little brighter.
I understood the people represented by those angels because I had lived on the other side of that tree. As a single mother raising four children, I knew what it meant to count every dollar and still come up short. I knew the pressure of trying to make Christmas magical for children when the money simply wasn’t there. Some years, what I could give them was togetherness, wrapped in a big red bow of love.
And somewhere inside me was the thought: I wish there were an angel for us. Then, in 2016, that thought changed. Instead of waiting for an angel, I decided I wanted to become one.
2016The year I decided to become an angel
10Families in that first effort
150Families in each state where the program operated
ThousandsOf people together in person
JOY OPENS THE DOOR. CONNECTION HELPS A FAMILY KEEP MOVING.
From My Home to Other Homes
Operation Holiday® didn’t begin in an office building. It began in my home. I reached out to people in my community and my church and asked them to help me adopt families for Christmas. That first effort served just 10 families. There were no expensive offices, elaborate infrastructure or impressive walls surrounding the work. There didn’t need to be. And there still don’t.
Operation Holiday continues to operate from my home because I learned something important very early:
That simple idea grew. Ten families became dozens, and our reach expanded beyond one community. Eventually, Operation Holiday was able to serve 150 families in each state where the program operated. Sponsors answered the call, and many didn’t disappear after one Christmas. Some have returned year after year, including sponsors who have now been part of Operation Holiday for five years. They became part of our story too.
Built From Lived Experience
I know what it feels like to need help. I know what it feels like to want your children to experience the same joy other children experience at Christmas. And I know that hardship doesn’t always look the way people expect it to look. That understanding became part of the DNA of Operation Holiday.
We created ways to reach families in their homes, including people who are homebound, lack transportation, or simply feel uncomfortable having their hardship exposed. Christmas shouldn’t belong only to the people who can make it into a building. This was the birth of Operation Holiday at Home®. But something else happened along the way. The little program that started inside my home grew large enough to bring thousands of people together in person.
What began as bringing Christmas into people’s homes expanded into an experience where families could walk through the doors and choose from thousands of toys while enjoying children’s activities, entertainment and food. At the same time, parents could connect with resources and critical services delivered on the spot, including assistance with programs and necessities such as WIC, TANF, SNAP, diapers and formula. These were services many parents struggled to access simply because they had to work to support themselves or their families. This became the birth of Operation Holiday Every Day Is Christmas®.
One did not replace the other.
The Mission Continued While My Life Changed
Operation Holiday grew during years when my own life was anything but easy. I started Operation Holiday at Home® while facing Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer. I had already survived thyroid cancer. The chemotherapy that helped save my life damaged my heart and led to heart failure. Then, in 2023, I survived a stroke.
The stroke took the use of much of my right side, including my dominant right arm. I spent part of my recovery in a wheelchair. And Operation Holiday continued. Today, something as ordinary as reaching for an object can require considerably more effort than it once did. The same is true figuratively. Sometimes I have to reach three times harder to accomplish something that once would have been simple.
I Never Imagined How Far It Would Reach
When I think about the woman who started this from her home, I sometimes have difficulty reconciling that beginning with what Operation Holiday has become. I wasn’t sitting behind a desk with a grand expansion plan.
I was a Black woman, a mother, and a human being with a desire to help humanity regardless of color, sex, sexual preference and religion, who understood struggle firsthand, trying to make Christmas better for somebody else. I could not have imagined how far that decision would travel.
I couldn’t have imagined the families we would eventually reach. I couldn’t have imagined sponsors discovering Operation Holiday, answering the call and then returning year after year. And I certainly couldn’t have imagined going from a home-based program serving families where they lived to an annual experience capable of serving thousands of people. But I have been privileged to watch it happen.
Their Joy Is My Joy
People sometimes wonder how I continue doing this through my own struggles. The answer is actually quite simple. I live vicariously through their joy.
I see a child receive something they hoped for. I see the relief on a parent’s face. I see a senior realize somebody remembered them. I watch a sponsor discover how good it feels to become somebody else’s angel. Their happiness makes me happy.
That is where my passion lives. Operation Holiday isn’t about pretending hardship doesn’t exist. It’s about refusing to allow hardship to have the final word.
Ten years later, the mission that began around my home remains remarkably simple:
Because sometimes changing someone’s Christmas doesn’t require expensive walls. It just requires someone willing to reach.
Penelope “Penny” Lopez Founder, President & CEO Operation Holiday®
Penelope “Penny” Lopez