Sarnia's DeGroot's Nurseries is spreading holiday cheer by giving away some free Christmas trees.
On Thursday morning, the nursery announced it would be making fresh-cut Christmas trees available free of charge for families who still need one.
Owner Operator John DeGroot said they had around 70 trees left at around 10 a.m. and that he expects to be empty in the next day or two.
"We just looked at the numbers earlier on this week and we said 'it's not likely that we're going to sell all these trees,' so we said rather than us chip them up and turn them into mulch let's see if there are some families that would like to have a Christmas tree. So yeah, we're happy to oblige."
DeGroot said he doesn't believe they've ever done this before because they've never been in a position where they've had a bunch of trees left over.
"It's always a crapshoot because every January we look at it and we say 'how many trees should we order this year?' We did order more this year but that was based on the fact that last year we ran out and we could've stood another 100 more. But this year we simply have a bunch left over, so we thought let's share them."
DeGroot said the response has been nice.
"It's exactly what we expected because when you do a feel-good thing then generally the rewards are there and we're already seeing the rewards. I helped four people this morning with putting them in the trunk and it's kind of fun. You say thank you, you wish everybody a Merry Christmas and life goes on."
DeGroot believes they have a number of trees left over because a fair amount of people opted not to buy one this year.
"When you look at the grocery store and you add up the bill of groceries then you kind of go 'yeah, what's something we can give up?' And, unfortunately, it might be the Christmas tree because stuff is, we all know it, inflation sits at around six or seven per cent."
A social media post about the free trees had over 1,4oo shares in less than five hours.
