ELORA – A 30-year Christmas tradition in Elora is coming to an end, at least for the Benham family.
This will be the last year they will be doing their well known Grinch display on Wilson Crescent after decades of entertaining young and old alike with decorations based on the 1966 animated version of Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, screenings of the special projected outside and a costumed Grinch acting out scenes on the lawn and interacting with the crowd who have come to watch.
“I was 30 when I started and I’m 60 now,” said Gerald Benham, who runs the display and dons the Grinch costume for the nightly shows later in December. “It gets to a point where it’s become a lot.”
He noted last year was very difficult and a lot of the decorations and equipment used got “beat up” from the bad winter storm.
The movie screen snapped, the laptop that runs the DVD and projector both got water damaged from snow and the wind blew decorations onto the roof of his car.
“It was a pretty expensive year,” Benham said with a laugh.
He didn’t want to go out on that note and decided he wanted to give the community one more time this upcoming season.
“A lot of people kind of have made it their tradition and go to event every year,” Benham said. “The ones who were little kids, now they’re bringing their kids.”
The display started relatively small 30 years ago. At the time, Benham remembered there not being a lot of licensed Grinch merchandise or decorations.
He had always thought his house looked “kind of goofy” with a long slanted roof that he joked looked like Mount Crumpit. This inspired the Benham’s to make some Grinch decorations based off the Boris Karloff cartoon version which grew over the years into including screening the cartoon and live Grinch actors.
Beyond aging, Benham said he’s a little more concerned these days about the traffic coming with the amount of children around and joked he doesn’t want to “torture our neighbours more than we have” which is leading him to the decision to end the display after this year.
“Our neighbours have been very good, very supportive but I’m sure they probably go ‘oh my god, it’s almost here again,’” Benham said.
He’s looking forward to seeing the people come out one more time each night from Dec. 18 to Dec. 24, with the show running from about 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The Benhams ask people coming to drive slowly and watch for children.
While this is the end of an era for one family, it could live on with another.
Benham said there is some talk of other people taking on this tradition elsewhere in town.
“Maybe somebody else will be as crazy as what we were over the years,” Benham said. “Good for some younger legs to maybe start doing this.”
