Samantha Plunz, along with her husband Paul, is trying to bring some community, food, and Christmas cheer to elderly folks during the holidays. (Photo submitted/Samantha Plunz)

By Nick Nielsen

Bringing Christmas Cheer

Simple Christmas post turns into helping feed families over the holidays

Nov 24, 2025 | 2:01 PM

What started as a simple Facebook post to try and make one person’s Christmas better has quickly snowballed into a movement to bring joy to as many people as possible this holiday season.

The original post Samantha Plunz put up asking about elderly people she could ‘adopt’ for the holidays for a meal and a gift.

Samantha Plunz made the post expecting to hear about one or two elderly persons that could use some company this year for the holidays, but instead she’s received a ton of suggestions for elderly folks as well as a ton of people coming forward to help.

“I see a lot of things online, like about the Angel Trees and stuff like that, but all I’ve only ever really seen is about children, right? I know that pension isn’t great for our seniors to live off of, and especially the ones that are still living in their own homes. I just thought that I would just make it a little bit brighter for somebody else’s Christmas,” she said.

The biggest surprise out of this for Plunz wasn’t just the number of people that have been suggested to her, but the different situations they are all dealing with. One person is a single elderly man living on his own, another an elderly woman who is raising a 10-year-old granddaughter, another is an elderly couple raising five grandchildren.

Community leaders

'He's leaving a big hole': community mourns loss of respected Prince Albert caterer

2h ago

Look up

Watch for planets to align in Saskatchewan skies tomorrow: Astronomist

2h ago

Fuel Stop brawl

Instigator of Fuel Stop brawl gets community-based sentence

3h ago

Because of that, Plunz was surprised to see that there was less demand for presents and quality time with these elderly folks, and in fact a larger need for food to help these families through the holidays.

“It sure opened my eyes a little bit more on what is happening in Prince Albert, or just in the world in general, where there’s a lot of grandparents having to take on the responsibility to keep their kids in the family. So that caught me off guard. I was only going to try and pick one out of the names that I got, but with one being a single man and the other three raising grandkids, now I can’t pick. Because in all the requests that I got, it’s been food.”

On the other side of that coin, Plunz said there has been a long list of people reaching out to help. So far she’s had monetary donations come in from her own family and friends, some as far away as Yukon, and even her own First Nation Band, the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, has even offered to help. Now she’s appealing to some other organizations as well to not just provide a nice little gift for Christmas, but a proper Christmas feast.

“I have made another call out to another organization, haven’t heard anything back yet from them. I was going to go this week here and talk to the Co-ops about even like a little bit of a discount on turkeys. I’m not asking for anything for free because I know they got to cover their cost too on their end, but like I said I’d be happy with 5 per cent off, I’d be happy with 10 per cent off, just something to help alleviate a little bit so that I can buy more. Me and my husband went out already last week and we’ve bought stuff like gingerbread houses for the kids, we bought sugar cookie mix and icing and stuff like that for the kids, we’ve bought the mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables, and yeah, chocolates too.”

As for why Plunz wanted to do something like this in the first place, it all came from an effort to try and think about others more and herself less. She herself is unable to work, so she thanked her husband Paul for being so accommodating to help her go after an initiative that became bigger than she expected.

“I just thought that I’ll try and instead of me being selfish, instead of concentrating on myself and my own needs and wants, whatever, I wanted to do it to somebody else, to kind of help alleviate some sort of, I don’t know, thing for these grandparents that are raising their grandkids. So that’s, what I found out since I’ve done this.”

If you know of another elderly family that could use some help and company over the holidays, or if you yourself would like to step up and help Plunz’s effort, you can text her at 306-420-8993.