The Berry’s Christmas House on Country Club Boulevard had “very, very good” support from the community this year.
“We had a really good time and ended up making $2,007.95 with all the contributions that came in,” says Ken Berry.
Ken has put up the spectacular Christmas display in lights and unique penguin scenes at 142 Country Club Boulevard for the past 15 years with help from his wife, Julia, and their family to raise funds to help children in need.
This year the Cariboo-Chilcotin Child Development Centre Society, which is in the process of expanding on Second Avenue, is the benefactor of the Berry’s lights display.
Ken says people came more than once and many people took the time to walk down their driveway to see venues that are not easily seen from the road.
Quite a few friends and neighbours also dropped in to say hello.
There was also a new dynamic to the visits this year that was a bit unexpected.
He says they usually get a lot of people checking out the house on Christmas Eve, but this year more people took the time to have a look and make their donations on Christmas Day.
He says someone made a donation every night the lights were on, which was from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. every evening from Nov. 29 until Jan. 4 when he started taking down the displays.
“We weren’t shut out any nights,” Ken says.
Given the unusually warm, then freezing conditions over the holidays, Ken says there were times he had to chisel ice off the displays.
He says some of the lights, which are not easily reached, will stay up until spring but most of the displays are down now.
The big blow-up mascots are particularly difficult to take down because they need to dry out in the basement before being folded and put away.
Ken and Julia figure it takes 150 hours over about two and a half months to put up all the lights and displays. Their electricity bill rises to about $300 a month when the lights are turned on.
For the past four years Ken and many golf buddies have also been raising money through the donation of gently used golf balls at the golf course.
Last year he says that project raised about $575 for the cause, but he doesn’t expect to make that much on the golf ball collections this year because most of the used and lost balls have already been collected and donated to the cause.