Volunteers in San Francisco spend Christmas morning preparing and delivering meals

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Volunteers in San Francisco showed the Christmas spirit early Wednesday, starting at 5:00 am to prepare 4,000 meals at the Salvation Army.

The meals will be delivered to people who otherwise can't get out and likely don't have visitors.

"For most of these people, a Salvation Army volunteer is the only person they are going to see today on Christmas Day and someone that's going to bring them some Christmas joy and a warm meal," said Jennifer Byrd, Communications Director for the Salvation Army in San Francisco.

It was an early wake-up call but volunteers say it was worth it.

"We're very blessed and it is great to give back to the community. And people need it. It puts a smile on their face, it's wonderful," said volunteer Stacy Glocky of Hayward.

Henrietta Mei was in charge of scooping potatoes onto the dishes. She said her family decided to change up Christmas this year.

"We actually are not doing gifts because we decided to just you know it's a huge family reunion so we decided to just do eating we treat each other and that's our gift. So it frees us and gives us so much time. If there's no gift, there's no gift opening so we can come," she said.

She is in town from Boston to visit her brother in Alameda, who brought the whole family to the Salvation Army.

"It's nice. I was thinking we should do this in Boston! We don't have to travel so far to come and do this we should do it there," she said.

The Salvation Army says Christmas is covered but the agency is worried about funding in 2020. Officials say because Thanksgiving was so late this year, they lost six days of bell ringing so donations are down. They hope people will keep the non-profit in mind when considering their end of year donating.