The Empty Stocking Fund had nearly 6,500 donors last year, including two bridge clubs, a tropical fruit and nut company, and something listed only as “the Moeller Christmas Party.”

But among the more unusual givers was the Vanguard Class from Avondale Presbyterian Church on Park Road.

It’s a Sunday school group, created in the late ‘60s specifically for younger couples in their 20s and early 30s.

Or rather, it used to be.

The 25 attendees have stuck around so long that the class is now a retirees’ group, populated by people between 60 and 87.

They claim to have known each other long enough to qualify as a family, including their own traditions.

Among those traditions is the collection of an offering each Sunday morning. Nobody remembers when it started or why, but the money has become a fund for the needy, including members of the group facing difficulty. “Why?” asked class member Nancy Favor, 68. “Because that’s what Christians do.”

It amounts to several hundred dollars annually, which the class has shared with agencies like the USO and with projects like the Observer’s Empty Stocking Fund. The fund, started in 1920, supports the Salvation Army’s Christmas Bureau’s effort to buy toys for low-income children. This year, 7,000 families will be helped.

“So many of us in the group have grown up in Charlotte that we consider the fund a holiday tradition,” said Charles Favor, 68, Nancy’s husband and another member of the class.

The class members also tend to be grandparents, with a big soft spot for children during the holidays, particularly those who may not be loved.

If donations to the Empty Stocking Fund accomplish anything, the class hopes it will remind people of the more spiritual meaning of Christmas. And that’s something much bigger than toys and stockings filled with candy, said member Eldon Stout, who is 77.

It’s all about loving others and showing it, he says.

“I would hope first of all, that the money we give would put a smile on a child’s face,” said Stout. “And I would hope that it might inspire or shame someone close to that child to open up and be a little more giving of things, mainly love.”