Stittsville family ending five years of super-elaborate holiday displays

After five years of putting up elaborate holiday displays at his home in Stittsville, Shawn Turcotte is saying farewell to the tradition with his family’s biggest display yet.

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This year’s display features three movie-themed setups: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Grinch and Die Hard. The display is so large it spills into their neighbour’s yard.

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They’ll keep the display up from Dec. 1st to Jan. 1st at their home at 18 Cypress Gardens. Raising funds in support of CHEO, they collected $1,650 just from their opening night. Since they started putting up displays, the family has raised more than $175,000, Turcotte said.

Shawn Turcotte is back with his amazing Christmas lights display, now in its fifth and final year, raising funds for CHEO. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

As their kids will both be moved out next September, Turcotte said the months that it takes to set up the display is too much to do by himself.

“We feel like we’ve had a really good run…we’ve set up some incredible displays,” Turcotte said. “We’ve met hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. We’ve now displayed all of the family favorite movies. It just seemed fitting that this would be the last one.”

Originally his daughter’s idea to start the displays during the pandemic, the family made it a tradition to bring together their community. Starting during a time when his kids were young teenagers, he found it to be a great lesson on giving.

Throughout the years the number of people visiting has grown. Turcotte said people from all over Eastern Ontario come to see the display.

“We belong to a community that takes care of each other, we support each other, and we give back,” Turcotte said. “That has stayed true with us for the last five years of doing this, and this is why we continue to do it. Our community is so generous and so giving and so supportive of each other. It’s worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears.”

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This year the display features 8,500 lights, 2,500 more than 2023. Turcotte said seeing how big the display has become is fantastic as the house was only decorated with 1,500 lights in their first year.

Although they are unsure of what the future looks like for their holiday displays, they know this will be the final movie-themed fundraiser.

“Our youngest one will be leaving for school this September, so we’ll be empty nesters. We initially started this for our kids and it’s progressed to what it is today,” he said. “There might be something a little bit, or completely different in the future.”

Turcotte wants to continue giving back to the community, he said it is time to change course to something simpler.

— With a file from Ashley Fraser