Christmas tree sales spike early as people crave joy, an end to 2020

BARTOW, Fla. (WFLA) – After a year of illness, death, political division and civil unrest, people are turning to holiday cheer to end 2020 with some joy.

“Early Christmas, get into the season. 2020 with everything that’s been happening, why not?” said Lakeland’s Carlos Roman.

He showed up at BG’s Trees in Bartow to scout for a Christmas tree. His wife typically gets the final say. This year though, he couldn’t help but go home with a pre-Thanksgiving tree.

“Much earlier than normal. We usually don’t set up until December 1. [My wife] probably would have had it up last week,” he said.

He and his wife brought their Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations out of storage before Halloween.

People are ready to say goodbye to the year 2020.

BG’s Trees opened a week early after getting call after call from customers eager to get the holiday season started.

“Not only because of the calls but the year has been kind of a crazy year so people want some joy want some happiness so we figured we’d set up earlier,” said Nathan Baldwin, who owns the seasonal business with his family.

Typically, the business kicks off the week of Thanksgiving. This year, it opened Nov. 17 and already 200 trees have been sold at its two locations, in Bartow and Plant City.

Another co-owner tells 8 On Your Side sales have doubled, possibly even tripled over previous November sales.

Eleven feet trees are already out of stock in Bartow.

“Forty trees in one day. We had trees lined up here. People backing in, it was just crazy. We had pine sap all over us,” said Baldwin.

The family sells fireworks as well and saw a similar trend near 4th of July. More people were celebrating the holiday at home and buying more fireworks than ever before.

BG’s Trees offers a 15% discount to veterans.