Clermont’s most unbelievable Christmas house belongs to Mr. & Mrs. Christmas; it’s even what their mailbox says if you don’t believe it!

That house, located at 113 Pacific Ave. in the Sierra Vista neighborhood, attracts hundreds of visitors every December because every inch of it feels like Christmas exploded in the best possible way.

The house belongs to Phil and Tricia Joeckel, affectionately known by neighbors and people that know them as Mr. and Mrs. Claus and the word “decorated” doesn’t even begin to cover it. They spend months decorating and Phil has been building and preparing since the day after Easter.

Outside, the front yard is now a full-blown holiday spectacle, complete with snow and multiple photo ops. Gingerbread meets dinosaurs in a Jurassic Park-style Christmas scene, complete with cages Phil built himself for their blow-up Christmas dinos and towering, themed displays like a massive 9- to 10-foot gingerbread cake topped with, of course, a Gingerbread man. The entrance (also bult by Phil) to the house looks like you’re stepping straight into a gingerbread village and this year, the dinosaur display moved from the backyard to the front so everyone driving by could experience it.

Inside, it’s even more surreal.

Every room is transformed. Themed Christmas trees fill the house, including Rudolph, Toy Story, Rapunzel, bakery-inspired (in honor of Tricia’s favorite), Minions and more, along with animatronics, wreaths and details tucked into every corner. The kitchen even looks like a life-size gingerbread house. 

Front and center is the most meaningful tree of all…the family tree, filled with ornaments from Phil and Tricia’s childhoods and their children’s early years.

“Look closely and you’ll see dinosaurs, Barbies, football guys, Legos, everything,” Tricia says. “It’s all on there; so many memories, and we always decorate that tree together.” 

Phil’s love for Christmas goes back decades and it’s what started it all.

“I’ve been doing it since the ’90s,” he says. “It just kind of started off as something I enjoy doing personally because I love Christmas and then we decided to kind of start expanding on that.”

“Back then, I guess I never expected it to turn into what it’s become.”

It was in the early 2000s, that the display started evolving into something bigger. Phil even began hosting full holiday experiences with wedding professionals, dessert companies and Santa arriving in a limousine before taking pictures with area children.

“I kept adding to it and couldn’t stop,” he says. 

And although Tricia doesn’t always know what new thing Phil is building and what she’ll come home to after work, she knew exactly what she was signing up for.

“We’ve known each other for 30 years, but we actually started dating five years ago,” she says. “Helping to decorate the house was initiation and I passed it, so here I am today.”

Phil says he was surprised about a detail he didn’t know about Tricia in their pre-dating era. 

“I didn’t know in those first 25 years that she worked at a Christmas store and that she knew how to decorate Christmas trees,” Phil says. “It was a perfect match.”

As the displays have become more and more popular, Phil’s builds are all designed with one thing in mind: safety.

“My way of building went from it looking good to ‘it doesn’t just have to look good, but be safe,’” he says. “I had to understand that the community children were going to be interacting with it.”

Every year, people ask the same three questions.

“Where do you put all this?” Tricia says, explaining that one bedroom becomes a full Christmas storage room, with trees wrapped, ornaments cleaned and shelves lining every wall. 

“Then we close the door. Don’t open again till we’re ready to start,” she says.

The second question: Do the neighbors hate it?

“No, they love us,” Phil says. “They are absolutely amazing.” 

Neighbors help the Joeckels with parking, tools, watching their senior dog during tour times and flipping the switch to turn on the lights during open nights. 

The third question: Do you do it all yourselves?

Phil says “mostly,” but they do get some help from family and friends who test lights, move displays and tackle the roof. Tricia says she hosts a day with ladies from the neighborhood to test lights and her brother-in-law strings the lights on the roof.

But the real payoff is the reactions.

“I love the ‘oohs’ when people first come in and the ‘awes’ when they go out,” Tricia says. “One lady began tearing up as soon as she walked into the house and by the time we got to the back, she was totally in tears. She was like, ‘It’s just so beautiful.’”

Phil says it’s the touching moments like that one that stay with them forever.

“A little boy I never even met ran up to me and he gave me a big hug and it made my day,” he says.

Tricia says, “Every single year, we also hear one or two people say that they came to see our trees and decorations because they couldn’t bring themselves to do anything after losing a loved one.”

Most importantly, Tricia says she always see the true meaning of Christmas in the families that visit together.

“I think Christmas is about family and love,” Tricia says. “I want to inspire people to spend time with their families and treasure those moments, especially around Christmas, because it just goes by so fast.”

Phil hopes the magic sticks with kids long after the lights come down.

“I love it when kids, especially, show their excitement and love for Christmas, all the lights and everything else that goes with it,” Phil says. “You can see the joy on their faces and it’s nice because I’ve always felt that way about it too.”

EDITOR’S NOTE:
I actually used to live in the Sierra Vista neighborhood and one year during the holidays, our outside Christmas decorations won us 2^nd place and a $50 gift card from the neighborhood HOA’s committee. Our goal after that was to work our way up to 1^st place (and a $100 gift card), but after Phil moved in, there was no further hope—not just for us, but for any resident in our community! Even so, the anticipation of what he was going to add to his magical house each year and the excitement of seeing the first of his decorations appear on his lawn could not be beat either. I always thought of him as our very own, local “Clark Griswold,” but without the chaos and mishaps! 

Photos by Cindy & Ryan Peterson