Local families in the Foothills got a leg up on the holiday season thanks to donations of specialty Christmas trees courtesy of the Magic of Christmas along with the Sheep River Health Trust.

Volunteer for the Avenue of Trees Donna Cameron says they've been helping families who need and deserve these trees for a quarter of a century.

"Our mandate is to bring joy to these families," she says. " Be it for many reasons, financial needs, medical reasons, divorce, lay-offs anything along those lines and the families are all referred to us."

Cameron says this year the Magic of Christmas and the Avenue of Trees were able to bring five Christmas trees to different families coming from different upbringings.

"We took four trees to our magic families Thursday," she says. "The Magic of Christmas is a local charity that deals with three communities, High River, Okotoks and Black Diamond/Turner Valley and it's hard to keep track of how many families we've donated to because we've been doing this for so long."

One lucky family will receive their tree Friday and Cameron says all the volunteers involved with the event were happy to give back to the community.

"It went amazingly well and perfectly, the one family we gave a tree to are new to Canada so we gave them a Oh' Canada tree without us knowing them, one family has a 19 and 20 year old boys and they have the Santa Darth Vader tree but each one fit each home perfectly."

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