'Christmas House' open for holiday tours
RIMERSBURG, Clarion County — Christmas is never far away when you live at a place known simply as “The Christmas House” at 169 Baker St. in the borough.
“The house stays calm for like six or seven months before it gets overwhelmed with Christmas again,” said Michael Goughler.
Goughler and his husband, Lindsley Dunn, have been giving public tours and raising charitable contributions for years, inviting neighbors and out-of-towners alike into their cottage-style home to experience an explosion of Christmas created with memorabilia amassed over nearly two decades.
“It's grown to the point now where it's like, how much can you cram into one little house?” Goughler said.
Goughler and Dunn's living space is where their Christmas collection is on display. Each room is adorned with a tree and decorated in a different style.
The living room, where the Hallmark Channel's Christmas movie lineup runs almost continuously, is home to a sprawling, meticulously-arranged town of holiday figurines and houses.
The kitchen where Goughler bakes holiday cookies and treats — a tradition he carries on from his mother — is adorned in white to accent a pair of snowman curtains.
The home's basement, hung with a “Santa's Workshop” sign, is where the magic gets made each season. This is where much of their collection is stored, curated, swapped out and staged each year before the decorating can commence.
That's where Dunn does much of his work, keeping the collection of Christmas decorations fresh throughout the year and preparing the home's numerous trees for decorating — a task he usually does himself.
“We like to just keep a little variety to it,” Dunn said of how they manage and display their collection, which ranges from paintings of Santa Clause to the original Rudy and Roxanne figurines from Hallmark.
Goughler begins decorating the outside of the house in October, channeling his love of Christmas-themed electronics to create a picture-perfect display. He likens his efforts to a toned-down version of character Clark Griswold from the movie “Christmas Vacation.”
“The community always gets a kick out of it,” Goughler said. “But I've never taken the full Griswold approach yet. My neighbors would probably have a cow.”
Each year the pair decorates around a different Christmas theme. This year's theme, which focuses on representing more than a century's worth of Christmas ornaments, didn't coalesce until Goughler finished a five-hour wreath-making marathon.
The home's feature tree in the living room is adorned with only Shiny Brite ornaments from the couple's collection. The American-made ornaments were immensely popular in the 1940s and 1950s, and have been reissued in recent years.
“We don't have everything, but it's a pretty good representation from the early 1900s until they stopped making them,” Goughler said of their ornament collection.
Both Goughler and Dunn have been collecting decorations and memorabilia since childhood. But it was 19 years ago, when they met, that the size of the Christmas cache really began to take off.
Six years ago they decided to open the house to the public, giving tours by appointment and to walk-ins starting at 7 p.m. every day, and asking for donations that go to Charitable Deeds of Knox.
As word of The Christmas House has spread, Goughler and Dunn began hosting more and more visitors.
They get 50 to 100 total visitors and raise $100 to $200 for the charity, which helps shut-ins, the sick and elderly, and sponsors community activities for children.
They hope the tours continue to grow and enable them to raise more money for the charity. Putting on the nightly tours and displays is a lot of work, Goughler said, but they love it. “We live in a Christmas display, and it doesn't bother us,” he said.
Dunn says sharing his home's pageantry and holiday spirit with the public has become a mainstay in a house where Christmas tradition, including cheer and goodwill, is king.
“I guess maybe it kind of reminds me of all the good Christmases we've had through the years,” he said.
