A first Christmas living on Taffy Lane: newcomers embrace Ottawa’s most festive street

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Holly Price’s Old Ottawa South home was never big enough to decorate for the holidays like she always wanted.

“My whole family’s been big Christmas nerds for our whole lives, so I always really love decorating,” she says. “But we just had a small lawn, and there were only four or five houses in our neighbourhood that decorated.

“It was more of a solo activity.”

So when her family was looking to move to a new home, and there so just happened to be a real estate listing on Taffy Lane — Ottawa’s most festive holiday street — Price says the “whimsical name” and nearly 50-year-old Christmas decorating tradition was a selling feature.

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Price grew up seeing news coverage and YouTube videos of Taffy Lane lit up with lights, inflatable snowmen, red and green archways over driveways and Santa sleighs every December.

“When we saw the house go up for sale, we were really excited,” she says. “It’s a great opportunity to create that festive spirit.”

And when they made the move to the Orleans neighbourhood in June, Price couldn’t wait to participate in the Christmas festivities with her new neighbours. (Her name is “Holly,” after all.)

“It’s a dream come true to live on this street,” she said.

In one of the first conversations Price had after she moved in, one of her neighbours asked if she and her family knew what she was getting into.

“Yeah, we do,” she answered.

As a newcomer experiencing for the first time this winter the throngs of visitors outside her home, Price said she isn’t bothered by the nightly crowds that the street attracts.

As for keeping up with the festivities, Price said that the tradition contributes to the street’s communal charm, without explicit neighbourhood pressure to participate.

“People didn’t come to our door and say, ‘Welcome to the neighbourhood, also you have to put up Christmas lights,’” Price says. “It’s like an unspoken social contract. You see people putting up their Christmas lights and you think, ‘Oh I’ll participate. That’ll be really cool.’”

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Price said she spent around $350 on decorations. Three silver reindeer with golden bows around their necks stand on her lawn, with a mesh, bright green Christmas tree dripped in coloured lights in the background.

“It’s a little bit expensive to get started, and hopefully we can expand over the years,” she said. “You have to do a little at a time.”

Further down the street is Alex Ross, who moved to Taffy Lane in October 2023.

“We’ve definitely upped our game a bit this year,” he said, adding that his 2024 decorations include over 5,000 lights, more than double what he had in 2023.

“We try to get as many lights on the house as possible, and one or two cool decorations to show the festive spirit.”

The tree on Ross’s lawn shines with blue, pink, yellow and green coloured lights. Light-up icicles dangle from his roof, and red and white lights are wrapped around a pillar by his front door to resemble a candy cane. Ross said his decorations are tied together by a gingerbread house theme.

“We wanted to make an impact,” he said. “It’s kind of cool to be on a street that’s known for its crazy decorations.”

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Most of the Taffy Lane homes decked out with the biggest Christmas decorations are owned by longtime residents, like Peter Abercrombie, whose lawn is buried beneath light-up reindeer with Christmas-themed Star Wars characters standing guard at his garage door, under a red, lit-up archway.

Abercrombie has lived on Taffy Lane since 1977, around the time the holiday tradition first began.

“Everybody oo-ed and ah-ed, and said that they could do something better next year,” he said of his 1981 Christmas soldier decorations. “Then they did their own projects, and over the years it grew and grew.”

For other well-established Taffy Lane residents like Kailee Wise — who has been decorating her home with her husband, Darby Wise, since they moved to the neighbourhood in 2003 — the tradition is a way to stay connected with her family.

“Every Christmas Eve, my [grandmother] would stand out here in the cold in her little red parka. We’d sit out here for hours … with Christmas music playing and just wave, saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to others,” Kailee Wise said.

Wise said she now decorates her Taffy Lane home in part to honour her Christmas-decor-loving grandmother who died six years ago.

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“I make myself continue to do this because when you do it, it brings you cheer, gets you motivated, and brings back good memories,” Wise said.

For Price, the Taffy Lane tradition also extends joy throughout the community — a feeling she is familiar with, having worked with different charity organizations over the years.

“We’re bringing joy to so many people which I think is very fun,” she said. “There’s no pressure. Just do whatever you can, and it’s just nice to see people turn on some lights in participation.”

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