Offers pour in to buy thousands of Christmas trees damaged by vandals, saving local business

Despair after vandals cut the tops of 6,000 of his Christmas trees this summer quickly turned to disbelief and then joy as more and more people contacted tree grower Gerrit Brinkman and offered to buy a damaged tree. The Wenum-Wiessel businessman now has high hopes of finding buyers for each of the topless trees, which he’s selling at cost, Brinkman told Omroep Gelderland.

Twice, vandals damaged a field full of lovingly grown Christmas trees. First, by cutting off the tops and then with poison. “Seven years of work for nothing. The damage could amount to three to four hundred thousand euros,” Brinkman said in August.

Since then, his phone has been ringing off the hook. “So many people and growers from home and abroad supported me,” he now told the broadcaster. “Many people offered to buy a damaged tree. So sweet.”

Several neighborhoods and streets took dozens of topless trees off of Brink’s hands, including in Almelo, Hengelo, and Nijverdal. “We put Christmas trees on both sides of the road,” Piet Terlouw, a resident of Spijkerweg in Nijverdal, told the broadcaster. They bought 33 trees from Brink. “We only put lights on. In the evening, in the dark, you can’t see that they have no tops.”

“I ended up getting more customers because of it,” Brink said about the vandalism. “There are traders and garden centers who purchased as many as 500 trees. They will sell them for me.”

Brink said the heart-warming reactions moved him. “It’s fantastic. What has been done to me has turned into something positive. It turns out that there are more good people than bad people.”