“Really heartwarming to be able to give back”

“It’s the best night of my life,” said nine-year-old Sophia Benintende.

The Benintende family was one of the many families that came out to the Hamburg Fairgrounds Festival of Lights on Tuesday evening for a Holiday Party, hosted by the Bills rookies, which was the final event of the Toyota Rookie Club for the 2022-23 Bills rookie class.

“It’s so cool and really heartwarming to be able to give back to others and really just be a positive influence in this community because this organization has given me everything that I have ever dreamed of,” CB Kaiir Elam said. “It’s everything that I’ve worked so hard for and for what this organization has given to me, I couldn’t be more grateful.”

For the first holiday party back at the Fairgrounds since 2019, over 200 people from WNY organizations and their families joined a few of their favorite Bills players to ring in the holiday season. Members of Salvation Army Buffalo, the Boys & Girls Club of Buffalo, and Oishei Children’s Hospital, among many other organizations, enjoyed a night filled with holiday festivities from visiting the Reindeer Barn to seeing Santa at the North Pole Experience.

For Benintende, who was there through P.U.N.T., she spent the evening with her family and a friend who she met back in October at the Buffalo Bills Crucial Catch Night. That friend happened to be Elam, who she didn’t realize was a member of the Bills when the two first met.

But they both learned something new that night.