‘Christmas Vacation’ Sensation: Local Builder’s Home Becomes a Magnet for Toy Donations

When Harbaugh Developers’ custom home building business in Stone Harbor and Avalon slows a bit during the winter, owner Steve Harbaugh’s home is a hub of activity.

Come Christmastime, Harbaugh converts the exterior of his family’s home in Mickleton into a pop-culture delight that lights up the night. The Harbaughs’ house in Gloucester County becomes the Griswolds’ house in the movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”

Much like scenery in that 1989 film, endless strings of white lights decorate the Harbaugh home and shrubbery from shortly before Thanksgiving through Jan. 1. A close facsimile of the character, Clark Griswold, the star-crossed, Christmas-spirited dad who was played by Chevy Chase, hangs from the rafters above a second-floor exterior balcony. Even a well-lit Santa and his reindeer-led sleigh decorate the front lawn at 503 Legends Court.

Last Christmastime, three vehicles strategically parked in front of the house could have passed for those in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Harbaugh added these purchases to his Griswold home décor in 2019, its second year as a homegrown tourist attraction. The vehicles include: a 1989 Ford Taurus wood-paneled station wagon topped by the Griswold family’s freshly uprooted, gigantic Christmas tree; a 1973 Ford Condor motorhome complete with a new, animatronic, beer-drinking Cousin Eddie emptying the RV’s septic tank; and a 1984 LTD Crown Victoria police car like those featured at the film’s chaotic ending.

“I’m kind of a perfectionist,” Harbaugh says. “I want to give visitors the real thing.”

Harbaugh decided that the Griswold house, which he always wanted to re-create, would become a reality in 2018. He pushed himself to do so. The energetic developer “was not in the Christmas spirit” that year, he notes. He was still mourning the death of his father, George, who died in January 2018. The father and son co-founded Harbaugh Developers and worked side by side for 15 years: “I sold them, he built them!” the younger Harbaugh says.

“When I thought, ‘I’m not doing anything [a Griswold house] this year,’ I could hear Dad’s voice ringing in my ear,” Harbaugh muses. “Dad always looked on the bright side of life.”

Once Harbaugh got going, there was no stopping him, says his wife, Gina, who amusedly wondered “What is he doing?” as the project progressed. For in addition to hanging row after row of white lights on their home with the help of his “guys,” as Steve calls them, her husband also tinkered with various small mechanics and applied clay, among other items, to hand craft two mannequins. The mannequins became Clark Griswold, hanging from the home’s rooftop, and Cousin Eddie, standing next to a beat-up, rented RV on the front lawn.

Steve Harbaugh poses in front of his Griswold-inspired home.

“With the rise of social media, it really took off,” Gina says.

Suddenly, lines of cars slowly drove by the Harbaugh house and groups of people stood at various spots on their lawn.

That’s when the entrepreneur and his spouse saw an opportunity to spread additional Christmas cheer. Pop culture warmly embraced the meaning of Christmas that first year when the Harbaughs asked Griswold house

visitors to place new toys inside that old RV, toys that would be donated to Gloucester County Toys for Tots.

Such a toy collection would also have been in keeping with his father’s cheerfully benevolent ways, Harbaugh says: “Dad gave to all sorts of charities.”

The crowds did not disappoint. Generous sightseers, neighbors, family members and friends, classmates, Harbaugh Developers’ business associates and clients, the people who sent “boxes and boxes” of Amazon gifts, sometimes anonymously, to the Harbaugh home, and others provided 4,100 toys for youngsters in 2018, Harbaugh says.

That number more than doubled last year. Harbaugh says that visitors donated 8,718 toys that went to Toys for Tots and another charity, Kelly’s Kidz, in 2019.

Kelly’s Kidz is a nonprofit organization that provides play items for children in pediatric hospital settings. It was founded by Bob Kelly, the traffic reporter for Fox 29. More than 2,000 of the toys collected at the Griswold house in 2019 went to Kelly’s Kidz for distribution at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Harbaugh says. His good friend, Tim Jennings, president and CEO of Telecorp, Inc. and the occasional live Cousin Eddie on the Harbaugh’s front lawn, filled four Telecorp trucks full of toys and transported them to St. Christopher’s.

The Harbaughs’ three young children, Angelina, Zachary and Zoey, help to keep their Griswold house and its goodwill going. “The kids love collecting the toys,” says their mom.

After some visitors handed cash donations to Harbaugh for the purchase of toys in 2018, he added a mailbox for the collection of such donations. These monetary donations are spent on toys purchased at the local Target or on Amazon, he says. Angelina, Zachary and Zoey accompany their parents on shopping trips to Target in order to select choice toys for the children who will receive them via Toys for Tots or Kelly’s Kidz. Last year, the Harbaughs transported themselves and their toy purchases in the Griswold station wagon with the tree on top.

Extensive media coverage of the Griswold house in 2019, in part due to Harbaugh’s innovative vehicle additions and a professional decorator’s touches, brought an increase in visitors from as far away as Toronto, Long Island, New York City and Virginia Beach, Va.

Plus, the Schneider family, from whom Harbaugh purchased the 1989 Ford Taurus station wagon, traveled from their home in Chilton, Wis., to see the Griswold house and their old car in its new movie-set-like-scenario. Parents and children from both families all enjoyed one another’s company during that visit. “We hung out together for two nights,” Harbaugh recalls. And, “their three children saw the ocean for the first time,” he adds with delight.

“We’ve met a lot of good people” thanks to the Griswold house, says its creator before pulling up pictures of a few of them on his phone. “One little girl sold hot chocolate and donated the money to Toys for Tots,” Harbaugh says with a smile. A local man who runs an auction house, Mike Hryckowian, of Five Star Auction, showed up one day with loads of toys that he donated.

The Harbaughs also hear from visitors via the U.S. Postal Service. Fans of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” often use the Griswold house, or the vehicles, as backdrops for family Christmas-card photographs.

“So many people have so many different family-related Christmas memories that are associated with the movie,” Gina says pensively. People often share those personal stories with the Harbaughs in their Griswold greeting cards or in person. Some express gratitude because the Griswold house brings back cherished recollections.

So, what might sightseers expect to see at the Harbaughs’ Griswold house in 2020?

“Steve has this creative vision and he has to carry it out,” Gina says, adding that after so much growth in the past two years, “I can’t imagine what the next year will hold!”

Keeping the primary goal of collecting tons of toys for children at Christmastime in mind, its creator envisions upgrading the Griswold house again this year.

“I’m definitely going to kick it up a notch,” Harbaugh says, without revealing how. “Stay tuned!”