It’s been a sad few weeks around here – horrible tragedies in the news, and my Aunt’s passing in the season she loved most. I needed something to remind me of the Joys in this world, and Christmas time for me is usually abundant. My cousin posted about a house in New Britain.. the Christmas House… and I knew I had to go. My daughter accompanied me, with pasta and canned goods in hand for admission… see story exerpts, taken from last years Hartford Courant article, below…
“Rita Giancola started putting up Christmas decorations in October. Transforming eight rooms, a hallway, a stairway and the front lawn into the region’s biggest Christmas shrine takes time. It’s a labor that Giancola has been doing every year since 1978, and it’s a tradition that she’s determined to keep going. “I’m never going to retire,” the 87-year-old great-grandmother said. “If I’m 90, I’ll still be doing this.”
Giancola’s rambling Lexington Street house is a landmark for generations of families who show up to see hundreds of Santas, Nativity scenes, plastic snowmen, red-and-green elves — all lit up by thousands upon thousands of holiday lights. The first floor of Giancola’s century-old, three-family house is covered floor-to-ceiling with Christmas décor, dancing angels, mechanical Santa models, ribbons, tinsel, bows and seemingly endless strands of garland.
To get the full tour inside, bring along some nonperishable food donations. Giancola runs an open house for five nights every December to benefit the Prudence Crandall shelter and the local Salvation Army, filling cartons with canned soups, pastas, cereals, paper towels, cleaning supplies and similar items.
She’s lived in the house across from the New Britain Museum of American Art for more than a half century, and recalls that she decorated all the first-floor rooms every year. In 1978, she started the open house and has kept it up ever since. It’s been the topic of a New York Times feature and TV news reports over the years, but Giancola still frets about the chances of few people — and fewer donations.
“The children’s eyes go everywhere. The grandparents are almost crying with joy,” she said. “People come through and say ‘My parents brought me when I was little’ and now they’re bringing their own children.”
Giancola’s children and grandchildren pitch in decorating the more difficult-to-reach spots, but she figures she still does about 90 percent of the work herself.
“I’m up and down ladders all days,” she said, “and this year I didn’t decorate the second bathroom. I
got lazy.”
