Shaun Farrar

Dec 22, 2025

BAR HARBOR—As a kid, Aidan Pratt remembers wishing for the same things his friends talked about after Christmas break. As an adult—and as a firefighter—he decided to make sure other children wouldn’t have to do the same.

Growing up in a single income family of six and not being wealthy can impact a child in different ways.

Bar Harbor Firefighter Aidan Pratt knows that.

Even if your parents earn enough to give you and your siblings all the necessities of life, it may not leave much left for extras, like lots of Christmas presents or the newest most popular brands.

Pratt knows that, too.

“I just remember coming back sometimes from Christmas break, like just being a brat of a kid seeing like my friends with like, you know, new clothes, talking about the new games for their Xboxes, you know just kind of wishing that I had that kind of stuff,” Pratt said, “to no fault of my parents. It sucks when you’re a kid. You don’t know, you’re like ‘why don’t I get this stuff?’ So, I figured if I could do this for someone else, I am kind of selfishly doing it for a younger me, I guess.”

Nobody would describe what Pratt did this year as being selfish. In fact, Pratt, who has only worked for the Bar Harbor Fire Department for three years pulled off quite a feat of community building kindness and in a short amount of time organized a fire department toy drive for Christmas.

In just a few weeks, that small idea inside the Bar Harbor Fire Department grew into a community-wide effort that delivered Christmas gifts to children in need—and reconnected the department with its own history of holiday giving.

Thanks to the generosity of many donors, and the shopping prowess of fellow Bar Harbor Firefighter Samantha Dixon, Pratt was able to amass an assortment of gifts to be distributed to children throughout Hancock County.

The first of the gifts were chosen by Connors Emerson School Nurse Melissa Bishop. Bishop came to the fire department on Saturday, December 20, and picked gifts for students at Connors Emerson whose families she knows may need a little help with gift giving this year.

Any remaining gifts were donated to Community Closet 207’s Community Christmas program.

“I am very proud of what he did. I am very proud of him for doing it and I am hoping that in another year it gets bigger and bigger and we can keep doing it and start a new tradition,” said Bar Harbor Fire Chief Matt Bartlett, “I am very proud of him for taking this on and getting it done in a short amount of time.”

Christmas gift assistance is not a new tradition to the Bar Harbor Fire Department; it’s just one that went away for a while.

A Christmas tradition that once filled the Bar Harbor Fire Department with refurbished toys has found new life, thanks to a young firefighter whose personal history inspired a renewed commitment to holiday giving.

Chief Bartlett shared some undated photographs (one of the pictures has a wall calendar showing the year as 1942) from the fire department and the story of what firefighters used to do when toys were manufactured from more rugged materials.

Two of the pictures were taken in the same room that the toys were stacked in this year.

Back then, broken and battered toys would be collected throughout the year and repaired by the firefighters during their down time. Pieces would be straightened, wood and other parts replaced, and new paint applied, all to give a like new appearance. The refurbished toys would then be distributed throughout the community to those needing assistance during the Christmas season.

So, maybe not the starting of a new tradition so much as the rekindling of an old one.

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Pratt wished to express a special thanks to Bangor Savings Bank and the Bar Harbor Fire Fighters Association for their generous financial support. Pratt also wished to thank his fraternity brothers of SAE at the University of New Haven and the Somersworth, New Hampshire Police Department, who he turned to for advice on organizing such an endeavor and making it successful.

Correction at 6:34 p.m. It was Somersworth, New Hampshire not New Jersey that Aidan thanked. He came from a family of six.