You might be forgiven for assuming, but Jason Edwards is not a person with a preternatural love of Christmas.
If you've ever driven down Sixth Line in December, you've seen his place. His home on the northwest corner of Munn’s Avenue at Sixth Line is a full-out Disney-themed Christmas extravaganza. A Christmas movie plays on the projection screen, a model train trundles through toy mountain and the whole backyard is available for small children to climb into Santa’s sled, or have their photo taken in a cutout photo stand as Frosty the Snowman and the Gingerbread Man.
The place has become a seasonal destination for young and old in the neighbourhood and farther afield. Most every weekend evening in December, Edwards entertains his visitors dressed up as Olaf from Frozen, while his wife Erin distributes hundreds of cups of hot chocolate.
His house might be transformed, but there’s no deep connection for Edwards with Christmas.
Asked why he does what he does to his house, the 48-year-old shrugs, “I just like building stuff."
Edwards moved into his house at the corner of Munn’s and Sixth Line 15 years ago and immediately started renovating. After the renovation was complete, he found himself looking at all the tools he’d accumulated and wondering what he could do with them next.
He started with Halloween, creating a scary display with a working train. He wasn’t a model train hobbyist before – he just built it by trial and error. Despite never really caring that much for Halloween as a kid, Edwards quickly learned, “it’s fun to see people getting scared.
“Because a lot of the kids went home crying from my Halloween, I felt like I did my job,” he laughs. “But I felt like maybe I should do Christmas so the little ones would come back.”
That first Christmas, he started with a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer theme. Then a few years later, he swapped it all out for a new Whoville-themed display. This year, it’s all about Disney characters because his daughters, 14 and 17, love Disney, he says. He does all the wood cutouts and his wife Erin paints them. He started building in February.
"When you’re 50, or 40, or 30, who cares about Halloween? Same with Christmas," Edwards says. "But once you start building stuff, you get more into the spirit. It helps you feel like a kid again.”
The old displays are sitting in a barn two hours northeast of Oakville at his farm in Keene, Ont. He rents a 26-foot trailer the week after Halloween to break down his exhibit and bring in his Christmas stuff. He rents it again in January to take his Christmas display down.
Also, “we have no storage inside the house any more,” Edwards says. “Every last corner in the house is packed full of Halloween or Christmas pretty much.”
Every year, he adds a little extra. One day, he’d like to set all of his Christmas displays up at the same time on his farm.
To visit the Magic on Munn’s, take Oakville Transit route 19, or to drive, park 300 metres north of the residence at the River Oaks Community Centre at 2400 Sixth Line and take the four-minute walk down Sixth Line.