St. George • With Christmas fast approaching, Santa and Mrs. Claus and a handful of elves are huddled at the North Pole busily preparing for the onslaught of vehicle and foot traffic that parades by each evening.
There’s a lot to do. Santa has repairs to make. Mrs. Claus is dealing with nonworking elves on the shelf. Some lights and other décor are on the blink or need minor mending. And blower-toting elves are busy sprucing up the place, blasting the brown from fallen leaves out of the white-flocked trees and snow.
Time to fess up.
This Santa and Mrs. Claus, better known locally as Dan and Jill Olsen, reside nowhere near the North Pole. Their St. George home at 2183 Harmony Place is 3,655 miles south of the Earth’s northernmost point, and their North Pole is an actual pole. Moreover, the snow blanketing the ground owes more to artifice than Mother Nature.
(Dan and Jill Olsen) The Olsen home in St. George is decorated for the holidays.
But the decaying leaves soiling the faux snow and artificial trees are real enough.
“The leaves don’t start dropping until mid-December,” Dan lamented, gesturing toward the genuine trees nearby. “I’m out there every afternoon before it gets dark blowing all the leaves off the fake snow.”
Fortunately, the Olsens have some elves — adult children and grandchildren — to help out. After all, as the adage goes, many hands make light work. And with as many as 175,000 lights to string up for their annual Christmas extravaganza, there is a lot of work to do.
Local fame and national acclaim
Come what may, the show must go on. And there’s no question the Olsens know how to put on a show. The yearly “Christmas on Harmony Place” display at their home in the Bloomington Hills has garnered local fame and national acclaim.
(Dan and Jill Olsen) The Olsen home in St. George is decorated for the holidays.
In 2015, for example, the Olsens took top honors in an episode of ABC’s “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” netting the couple $50,000. As a result, cars lined up for a mile or more that year to see the spectacle. Eight years later, a steady stream of cars flows by each holiday night to witness what many call the “Wow House.”
Now a sublime blend of the sacred and the secular, the Olsen’s Christmas display was much more humdrum when they bought the home in 1996. They started out stringing some white icicle lights along the driveway and in some trees but soon opted to branch out.
(Dan and Jill Olsen) The Olsen home in St. George is decorated for the holidays.
Later, they perched Santa, his sleigh and three reindeer figurines on the roof and began hanging colored lights. Dan balked, though, when Jill suggested they wrap their outdoor trees with lights similar to what is done at Disneyland or Temple Square.
But when Lowe’s had a 75% after-Christmas sale on lights, Dan relented and the couple upped the amperage of their display in a big way.
“We bought $1,000 worth of Christmas lights for 250 bucks and sure enough, next Christmas I was wrapping the trees,” Dan said with a laugh.
The Olsens’ Christmas décor has increased exponentially ever since. A pastoral Nativity scene now graces the front yard. So does a shepherd herding sheep next to twinkling blue lights that resemble a pond. Purple drip lights on a nearby tree simulate falling snow. And red, white and blue lights and yellow ribbon on the USA Tree pay tribute to veterans.
An image of Santa is projected on one of their home’s windows. Rounding out the décor in the front yard are snowmen, an animated Grinch and a decorative electronic clock that counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until Christmas.
“We have people come every Christmas Eve to watch the clock turn over to Christmas at midnight,” Jill said. “It has become a tradition.
On the home’s north side, adults and children delight in the North Pole area. The centerpiece is Santa’s Workshop, which spouts cookie-scented smoke from its chimney and has a projected image of Mrs. Claus waving from a window. It was designed by an artist who once worked for Disney and DreamWorks.
Initially, the workshop was going to be a simple facade that would be propped up in the grass. That morphed into an actual house with four sides and a roof — and the cost morphed right along with it.
“We ended up paying about 2½ times [the $10,000] we expected to pay for it,” Dan said. “We could have bought a car for that amount.”
Another highlight is the Elves Cottage, which is a big draw for children. So are the animated reindeer and talking Mickey Mouse. There also is a mailbox where children submit scores of letters to Santa.
“We read many of the letters and we were going to answer all of them,” Jill explained, “but there are just too many.”
Accepting donations and taking stock
While admission to Christmas on Harmony Place is free, the Olsens have also set up a donation box and Venmo account for patrons to donate. All the proceeds go to Shriners Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., which is dear to the Olsens because it is helping pay for cleft lip or palate surgery for three grandchildren.
(Dan and Jill Olsen) The Olsen home in St. George is decorated for the holidays.
As much as they love Christmas, the Olsens admit staging the annual light show, which starts the day after Thanksgiving and wraps up on Jan. 6, isn’t easy. It takes a month to put up and take down the display, the parts for which are stashed in two rented storage sheds and shuttled to and from their home in moving trucks.
Youth from the Olsens’ church lend a hand by putting out dozens of figurines each year. Four of the Olsen’s five children and their grandchildren who live nearby also assist and lighten the load. So does a boy in the neighborhood the Olsens pay.
“He is my muscle and my back,” Dan said.
As arduous as their Christmas chores are, the Olsens insist the smiles they see on children’s faces make it all worthwhile. They were especially touched one year when a child, concerned about the baby Jesus in the Nativity weathering the cold, placed a blanket over the infant. They also delight in all the visitors who drop by from as far away as Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and even Delaware. Some have been visiting the Wow House since they were children and are now bringing their children.
Elderly residents living nearby are also captivated, often sitting out on their porches to people-watch and take in the glow from the lights.
“You just don’t know what a gift your house is to everyone at Christmas,” Jill remembers one neighbor remarking.
It’s a gift that will probably keep on giving.
“The only way we can stop doing this is to die or move,” Dan quipped, adding a move is not in the offing. “But if we ever decide to sell our home and move, we’ll hand the keys to the storage units [with all the Christmas décor] to the new owner and tell him, ‘This goes with the house. I suggest you put them up.’ "
