“I always wanted to do Christmas Vacation again, the way it should be done. Take it right over the top.”
Published Dec 16, 2023 • Last updated 10 hours ago • 2 minute read
The Turcotte family home at 18 Cypress Garden in Stittsville is an homage to the classic movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Photo by Julie Oliver /POSTMEDIA
Four years ago, Stittsville’s Shawn Turcotte and his family went “Full Griswold” in their lavish National Lampoon Christmas Vacation-theme holiday display.
The Griswolds are back for 2023, but this time Turcotte has decided to “take it over the top.”
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That’s 5,000 Christmas lights on the Turcotte home at 18 Cypress Gardens, a 1984 boat of a Pontiac Parisienne station wagon custom modified to Griswold specifications and cutouts and movie artifacts big and small from the 1989 John Hughes comedy classic. Cousin Eddie and his rusted RV are back, too, along with the RV’s pump-out problem. And it’s all in the name of charity.
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Turcotte says his displays have raised more than $150,000 for charity since they began in 2020: $100,000 for CHEO and more than $50,000 for the Stittsville Food Bank, this year’s beneficiary. Signs with a QR code link directly to the food bank’s donation site.
“We decided to go back to the food bank this year,” Turcotte said. “It’s been a really tough year. The price of food is so high this year, there’s higher interest rates, higher mortgages … People are really struggling.”
Shawn Turcotte and his family have reprised their tribute to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at their home at 18 Cypress Gardens in Stittsville. The annual fundraiser, now in its fourth year, has contributed more than $150,000 to charity. Photo by Blair Crawford /ott
Christmas Vacation, which starred Chevy Chase as hapless, holiday-loving Clark Griswold and Randy Quaid as his uncouth boorish Cousin Eddie, was the theme for the Turcotte’s first Christmas display in 2020. They followed that with homages to Home Alone in 2021 and Elf in 2022.
Normally, the family starts planning the display soon after New Year’s Day. But this year getting son Hudson set up at a U.S. university on a golf scholarship took up a lot of time.
“It was September and we hadn’t even started planning yet. Then, on the same day, I got alerts on Kijiji that this car was for sale, and a few hours later another alert for the RV. My wife said, ‘It’s a sign. We’ve got to do it,’” Turcotte said.
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“I always wanted to do Christmas Vacation again, the way it should be done. Take it right over the top.”
The car, which was modified in the shop at Cavanagh Construction, where Turcotte is a vice-president of construction, features a 25-foot Christmas tree (rootball attached, of course). Ottawa’s ParLUGment adult Lego fans club provided a 15,000-brick advent calendar. A cutout of Clark Griswold ogles a bathing beauty from the living-room window and there’s even the shredded comfy chair that marked the spot of the Griswold cat’s sad demise.
And the lights! Turcotte had a second electrical panel added to his home just for the lights that adorn every corner of the house.
He demurs when asked how much he spends on the show.
“We’ve always donated to charity. So now, instead of giving our money to charity, we invest it in our fundraisers and we raise even more money,” he said. “So, yes, there’s a cost for it, but whatever we do we return that money back to the charities tenfold.”
Festooned with lights and decor, the Turcotte home at 18 Cypress Gardens in Stittsville is transformed into a scene from the beloved Christmas movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” for charity. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /Postmedia
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