It was too warm for snow Saturday, but that didn’t stop people from flocking to downtown Onset to take part in the Onset Bay Association’s Christmas in the Parks event.

First-time Christmas in the Parks committee Chair Cheryl Bagangan said she volunteered to head the event this year, because she loves children.

“I used to be a preschool teacher at Headstart, and I run the Inn on Onset Bay, so it’s in the off-season for me,” Bagangan said. “I can’t really do anything in the summer, because I am so busy … and it’s so much fun.”

Among the various activities for kids and families were cookie decorating, caroling and pictures with Santa in the Onset fire station, and a talking Christmas tree. The latter was made to seem like magic with a little mobile phone technology.

“The children come up and tell the tree what they would like for Christmas, and the tree talks back to them!” Association Beautification Committee co-chair Lorraine McDonald said. “[The people manning the tree] are across the street on a telephone.”

Postmaster Robin Enos was on hand at the Spinney branch of the Wareham Free Library to help kids write letters to Santa. Enos said she answers every single one, but that some of the kids’ requests are so brutally honest that they “break my heart.”

“One year, one kid, all he wanted was a can of tomato soup … to feed his little sister,” Enos said. “So ones like that, I send them over to the fire department, and … they can deliver a meal to them.”

Today, Enos said, she helped a little girl write a letter asking Santa if she could see her father more often.

Enos has been playing post office Santa for 33 years, the last 13 of which have been in Onset. She estimated she answers more than 1,000 letters every year.

The event is free to the public, but it does not come cheap. Association President Eleanor Martin said it costs well over $1,000 to put on the event, but that it is worth it, since so many families in the area would not be able to afford this kind of holiday programming, should they have to pay for it.

“I know a lot of other places charge, but we try to keep … ours free, so that people in the community can just come and have a good time,” Martin said.