When driving down Guilford Road during the holiday seasons, there is one house that is impossible to miss – 2098 Guilford Road, the “Holiday House.” Decked out in hundreds of Halloween decorations in October and Christmas decorations in December, the house is a cornerstone of Upper Arlington holiday culture.
The house has been decorated since 1944 as a part of a rich familial tradition.
“Well, my parents, after my siblings and I were born, came from a farm, and when they came to this house, they decorated it just like they did their farmhouse. So they started decorating in 1944, and they decorated until they passed away,” house owner Barrett “Barry” Wear said.
Although the decorating started 80 years ago, there are still a couple of the original decorations being used today.
“We used to make the decorations out of wood, and I still have Santa and four elves on ice skates. They’re about five feet high, and you drive them into the ground on metal stakes. I don’t have any of the Halloween decorations, but I have one set of Christmas display items with Santa and the four elves that I’ve kept because they were made so thoroughly and completely, and today, they look brand new,” Wear said.
Wear mentioned that although those decorations were made with such high quality, most decorations today are made with much lower quality, so he has to get new decorations each year to replace the worn-out ones.
“We get most of our decorations online,” Wear said. “Some of them we get from Lowe’s, some of them from Home Depot, some from Big Lots, but most of them come from online.”
With the originals being some of his favorite Christmas decorations, he mentions two werewolves being his favorite Halloween decorations.
“I like the decorations the most that talk and say something. I have two werewolves, and they growl and they snort, and then move their body back and forth. Their eyes flash, they open their mouths and red lights come out. And then when it finishes, they bark like a little dog. It’s really cool. I bring those in the house, and I hook them up in the basement. And during the winter, as old decorations do, every now and then, you’ll hear the guys go off in the basement. So I listen to them year-round, they’re really cool,” Wear said.
Not only are the all-out decorations spectacular, but they also lead to diverse interactions with the community. All the decorations make the Wear household a popular trick-or-treat destination.
“I remember trick-or-treating there when I was younger. It’s sort of a local tourist attraction for the neighborhood,” senior Alexander Skoracki said.
Skoracki is not the only person who enjoyed trick-or-treating at the house.
“Last year, my daughter, she had a counter come out and count the number of people on Halloween. We had 970 people on Guilford Road from 6 o’clock till 8 o’clock,” Wear said.
Students from UA also enjoy the Christmas decorations, not only the Halloween decorations.
“My dad would slow down and let me and my siblings look out the window, and check out the place, and I love how they put all those decorations up every year,” sophomore Evan Bodin said.
Not only has Wear had many trick-or-treaters come to his house, he has also had unique interactions with the community surrounding Christmas.
“We used to have a night or two nights when my wife would dress as Mrs. Claus and I would dress as Santa, and we would walk around the front yard, and we would hand out candy to the kids in the cars, and candy canes to the people that would walk by,” Wear said.
Wear recounted that his favorite thing they ever did during the holidays was when they put up a Santa’s mailbox decoration in the yard.
“We had a mailbox out front. It said ‘Santa’s Mail’, and so many kids put letters in there and asked for all kinds of different things for Christmas. So my wife and I said, ‘Let’s ask them to put their addresses and we’ll surprise them, and if we can afford it, we’ll drop that present off.’ So we put that sign on the mailbox, and we delivered one year, 76 presents to little kids around the neighborhood in Arlington who left a note for Santa and wanted a special thing for Christmas,” Wear said.
Although Halloween and Christmas are the main holidays Wear decorates for, he used to also decorate for Easter.
“I used to do Easter. I had 28 Easter bunnies, 5 feet tall in the front yard. I had Easter baskets. I had bunnies. I had rabbits. The whole yard was full of Easter paraphernalia, and we gave out all kinds of Easter candy,” Wear said.
Unfortunately, Wear had to stop decorating for Easter because it was just as intensive as Halloween and Christmas, and the inflatable bunnies did not respond as well to the weather as other decorations.
“But if I would ever decide to do it, I still have all this stuff. And you never know. You never know. You might come by one day and see 28 5-foot Easter Bunny standing in the front yard,” he said.
Wear still keeps the Easter decorations, even though he doesn’t put them up, just in case he decides to decorate again for Easter in the future. He stores all his decorations-Halloween, Christmas and Easter-primarily in his basement and garage.
Wear also noted that with all those decorations in the yard, he begins to grow attached to them, and it’s sad when the time comes to take them down.
“When I had to tear down Halloween, it was kind of a sad experience, because you get used to all those little characters talking and doing funny things and people coming by and kids running around and screaming. It’s a real frenzied affair, but it’s so nice,” he said.
Wear takes down the Halloween decorations around two weeks into November, and keeps his Christmas decorations up for a couple of months after Christmas.
“You’d be surprised how many people still come by after Christmas, and when I’m taking them down, I’ve had so many people tell me ‘please leave them up.’ ‘It makes my day.’ ‘We feel so peaceful and happy when we come by here.’ ‘Please don’t take them down.’ ‘Please leave them up.’ And every year, I bet I have over 100 people that say that,” Wear said.
Taking down the old decorations is only half the battle. It takes lots of time and people to help put up the new ones.
“It took us about two and a half weeks to set up Halloween. It won’t take as much for Christmas, because while Halloween was up, I was going through Christmas and bringing it in the house and repairing the decorations and rewiring them and putting on new lights. My family helps me, my son, my daughter, her husband and their friends and just whoever happens to come out and show up helps out,” Wear said.
Wear enjoys decorating for both holidays because they each have their own unique attributes.
“Halloween, well, that was just chaotic. I mean, we would go outside and there’s like 100 exhibits, and each one of them saying something different, growling, snarling, talking, moving, and we would just sit there and laugh and joke about how these guys could shake and whatever they could do,” Wear said.
While he enjoys Halloween for its chaos, he also loves the serenity of Christmas.
“It’s just like a new fallen snow. It’s quiet, and it sends out what I consider the word ‘peace.’ Peace on Earth, good will to man. You would come home at night, and you would look at the beautiful Christmas display, and it just gave you a feeling of peace and quiet and how much we appreciate what we have, where we’ve been, and what we’ve done,” Wear said.
Although it takes a lot of time, money and effort to put up and maintain all the decorations, Wear still decorates due to his love of the community and the joy of putting a smile on others’ faces.
“My main reason for doing this is to make people happy. And as long as you would come up and look at my decorations and have a smile on your face, be jovial, have fun, then I’m a success. And whatever I have done has inspired people to be happy, and that’s what I want to see. I want to see a smile on everybody’s face,” Wear said.
