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EXETER — Perhaps it’s the battalion of nutcrackers who guide the way up the sidewalk, or maybe the lit candy cane lawn-border, or maybe the multitude of Christmas characters who greet you in the yard, but the house of Chris Mercavitch and Sherry DeMark Mercavitch looks much like the North Pole would in a Disney production featuring Tim Allen.
The family’s home is a neighborhood bright spot on Wyoming Avenue; so bright that it stands out against a landscape of neon signs from the bar next door and the glowing beacon of the Sunoco station across the street. The display, which features decor of the inflatable, hanging and illuminated varieties cover the front of the house, including the yard, the sides and driveway, even the patio. The Mercavitches give a lot of time and consideration to their yearly presentation, and they do it simply to spread cheer among family and neighbors.
“The kids love it,” Chris said. “That’s the main thing.”
Chris said their children, Skylar, 10, Christopher, 5, and Brady, 3, enjoy helping with the display, although help from the kids sometimes slows his two-week set up.
“A half hour job takes two, but it gets done,” Sherry said. The Mercavitch children aren’t the only ones who render joy from the decor.
“There’s always kids in our yard,” Sherry said. “Every once in a while we’ll get parents who call to see if they can take pictures in the yard with the kids. It’s like we have to do it.”
Chris said he takes time off from work to accomplish the decorating, which was moved up in his schedule this year.
“I took a week off this year before Thanksgiving, so I could get everything done,” he said. “I always take a week’s vacation, because we light our lights on Thanksgiving, but this year, other people were lighting them early, so I had to get them up faster.”
Chris said he and his wife have been elaborately decorating for 15 years at their current residence.
This year’s display includes inflatable snowmen and Santa Clauses, several complete with sleigh and reindeer and one on a motorcycle. There are moving wire animals that include several reindeer, a dolphin and a polar bear, throngs of differently colored and styled lights and LED displays that project moving lights onto walls of the house.
There are also several life-sized, traditional-looking Santa Claus figures, wreaths in every window and snowflakes and icicles adorn borders of the house and hedges. Inside their home, the Mercavitches have 10 Christmas trees, with two large trees and several small ones on the first floor, one in each bedroom and one in the salon Sherry operates from the house.
Chris said there was never a plan to let the display grow so large, but it happened gradually.
“It just grew — added one thing here and one thing there — and now it’s to the point where you have to beat the year before,” Chris said. “It’s got to change every year. It can’t stay the same.”
New additions to this year’s layout include Santa with his full team of reindeer on the roof and another St. Nicholas decoration holding a “Merry Christmas” sign in front of the doorway.
The reward for decorating, Chris said, is the appreciation others share with his family around the holidays.
“The nicest thing is when people come and tell you how nice it looks,” he said. “Years ago, somebody from out of state left a package on our doorstep. There was a nice note saying how they liked the lights and they had an ornament in there. I put it out every year. It’s touching like that.”
Chris said the positive comments from neighborhood children drive his motivation to keep decorating.
“It’s something you give back to the community,” he said. “We don’t expect anything back.”
Sherry, finishing her husband’s thought, said, “It just makes everything happy. That’s what Christmas is about.”
