The Christmas Box International
Address: 3660 South West Temple Street
Telephone: 801-747-2201
Website: the christmasbox.org
District: South Salt Lake
“I was born in Salt Lake City, but I moved every six months until I was sixteen. By then, I had lived in more than thirty cities. I tell people that it gave me a huge appreciation for the world, but what it really taught me was not to need anyone. I raised my siblings, mostly my sister, by the time I was five. I lost my childhood in order to protect her, but it gave me a sense of purpose.” Today, Celeste Edmunds leads The Christmas Box International, a nonprofit serving Utah’s most vulnerable children - an organization deeply tied to her own story of survival.
Celeste’s memoir, Garbage Bag Girl, captures what it meant to grow up carrying everything she owned from place to place, moving from drug rehabilitation centers to foster care to adoption. She recalls being only eight years old when police pulled her father from under a hotel bed in Salt Lake - the moment that launched her family into the child welfare system.
Through years of instability, Celeste held on to rare moments of tenderness that sustained her. When the state intervened, she was taken from her mother, who was then living in a rehab center in New York. Her two younger siblings had already been sent back to Utah, where they were adopted together, but Celeste was separated from them. Her mother walked her onto a plane alone, telling her she would live with a foster family in Utah - and that her father would be waiting at the airport. But when she stepped off the plane in Salt Lake City, her father was not there. Only a caseworker was waiting. “That was my childhood - one disappointment after another.”
A few days later Celeste was told her father - then in his own rehab program - would be allowed to pick her up for a single day, and that it would be the last time she would ever see him. Celeste prepared with the determination of a child desperate not to miss the chance. She rose before dawn, finished all her own chores and even her foster sister’s chores, and carefully packed her belongings into her black garbage bag.
That day with her father became one of Celeste’s most cherished memories. He had purchased small gifts for her, each wrapped in holiday paper - Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day - tokens of love that meant everything to her. He took her to a baseball game, their favorite tradition, and later stopped at a 7-Eleven for Funyuns and chocolate milk, the silly snack they always shared. At one point, despite the limp left from childhood polio and years of surgeries, he lifted her in his arms and looked into her eyes. He told her it was not her fault - none of it, not what had happened to him or to her mother, both of whom struggled with addiction.
On the drive back, tears streamed down her father’s face. Celeste, only eight years old, fought back her own tears so he would not cry harder. With astonishing maturity and compassion, she chose her parting words to comfort him rather than herself: “I’ll see you at the ball game.” It was his favorite phrase to her, and by giving it back she offered him hope - even as she stepped into an uncertain future.
The heartbreak did not end after parting with her father. When Celeste was eventually adopted, it was into a family where the mother and siblings were verbally and physically abusive. “The mom and siblings were dreadful to me,” she said. “It was only the dad who tried to be there for me, but he died early, and I was left to fend for myself.” She left that household while still in high school, sleeping on bleachers, on friends’ couches, anywhere she could, trying to cope on her own.
Those years also forced Celeste to confront her own choices. She often speaks about bullying, telling the story of Jennifer - the only true friend she had as a young teen. Wanting to fit in with the “cool” girls, Celeste turned on her, joining in the cruelty that drove Jennifer out of school altogether. A few years later, in a painful twist of fate, Celeste encountered Jennifer in a different city where both had moved. For Celeste, it felt like a miracle, a chance to apologize and make amends. But when Jennifer saw her, she ran, never to return to that school. “It is one of the hardest things to live with - knowing that my choices altered someone’s life so deeply, and that I lost the chance to make it right.”
It was during high school that Carly entered her life. Celeste had become friends with Carly’s daughter, and Carly - herself a single mother working two jobs - saw the potential in Celeste that others had overlooked. She welcomed her into the household and nurtured her, offering stability and encouragement. With Carly’s support, and the protection of a high school principal who literally stood in the hallway to make sure she graduated despite the chaos around her, Celeste earned her diploma. Years later, she would dedicate Garbage Bag Girl to Carly: “She didn’t birth me, but she gave me life.”
In 2000, when Celeste was twenty-six years of age, Carly formally adopted her, giving Celeste the home and family she had never known. It was a rare, happy conclusion for someone with her history - and it laid the foundation for the life she would build going forward. Nearly two decades later, with her own children grown, Celeste turned her attention to writing her memoir. The process was both healing and excruciating. Richard Paul Evans, who co-authored Garbage Bag Girl with her, often sat by her side as she recounted one painful memory after another, encouraging her to bring each buried chapter into the light. “It was harder to write about than to live through,” she admitted.
Celeste’s path to Christmas Box International had begun years earlier, in 1995, when she was five months pregnant with her first child. She met author Richard Paul Evans, who had just signed a record-setting publishing deal for The Christmas Box. That same year, Utah was one of nine states being sued for mistreatment of children in foster care. Evans and his wife, Keri, decided to use their unexpected windfall to give back. They convened a child welfare summit at the University of Utah’s Graduate School of Social Work, and Celeste, then his assistant, was at the table. Out of that conference came a bold vision: build emergency shelters for children who had nowhere safe to go.
The first Christmas Box House opened in Salt Lake City in 1998, followed by Ogden and Moab. What makes them unique is that, unlike most shelters in Utah licensed only to age twelve, Christmas Box keeps children of all ages - from newborns to eighteen - together. “We keep about a thousand siblings in the same space every year between the three locations,” Celeste explained. On average, children stay two to six weeks, half eventually returning home under safety plans. The rest are placed with kin or in foster care.
Over the past twenty-nine years, Christmas Box International has expanded far beyond shelter care. In 2002, it launched resource rooms across Utah; today there are twenty-four in twenty-two counties, with a goal of reaching all twenty-nine counties by 2026. In 2003, the organization introduced Project Duffel, ensuring thousands of children would wake up to Christmas gifts each year - 2,600 in 2024 alone. In 2010, it opened a central donation center that now processes more than $800,000 of in-kind goods annually, shared not only with its shelters but also with 109 nonprofit partners across the state.
The Salt Lake City Christmas Box House - built in 1998 and still at the heart of the nonprofit’s mission - has thirty-three beds. Children arrive through the Division of Child and Family Services, usually after parental rights have been removed due to abuse, neglect, trafficking, or homelessness. Staff provide twenty-four-hour supervision, meals, school support, and medical care, while Celeste’s nonprofit team ensures that each child receives clothing, toys, hygiene kits, and a duffel bag so that none will leave with their belongings in a garbage sack. “Every child deserves dignity, even in the hardest moment of their life.”
The shelter sits on a unique campus alongside other state-run youth services: group homes, a juvenile receiving center, a homeless youth resource center, even a drop-in space for parents who need a short-term break. Staff and resources flow between buildings, ensuring that each program can call on support when a large sibling group arrives or a particularly challenging case needs extra hands. It is a model of collaboration that sets Salt Lake City apart.
Celeste spent nine years on staff in the early days, helping to raise funds and open the three Christmas Box shelters, then moved into the corporate sector for more than a decade to build her leadership and fundraising skills. In 2020, with her children grown, she returned to The Christmas Box International as Executive Director. In total, she has been tied to the organization for nearly its entire twenty-nine-year history - as a staff member, board member, and now leader. Celeste proudly states that “In its lifetime, the organization has served more than 170,000 children - enough to fill New York’s Madison Square Garden eight and a half times.”
And in a beautiful twist of fate, a pivotal figure from her youth re-entered Celeste’s life. Shane, the boy who had quietly looked out for her in high school - covering her with blankets when she passed out from drinking binges and making sure she was safe - reached out on Facebook after thirty-five years. Their reconnection blossomed into love. “He is the only one who knew me then and is still in my life today,” Celeste beams. “He remembers that broken fifteen-year-old girl, and he is proud of who I’ve become.” Together now, they share a partnership rooted in patience, kindness, and deep respect.
There is nothing that matters more to Celeste than the individual child who walks in carrying nothing. “I would not change one hard thing in my own life if it meant I couldn’t be here today. I believe there was a path for me, and even though it was long and painful, it brought me here. I know how these kids feel, and I know they deserve better. At Christmas Box, we have a short window to give them that better life - and I will never take that gift for granted.”
