Self-described Christmas fanatic Blair Struble never missed flying home to Michigan to spend the holiday with family – until the pandemic hit in 2020.
“Obviously, traveling was not really a good option,” he said. “To make myself feel better about the situation, I decided, you know what, I’m going to put up this giant display for Christmas Eve.”
What Struble created outside his Lake Owego home was a retro Christmas wonderland, and not your typical neighborhood holiday display.
For years, Struble had been collecting animated characters from old department store Christmas displays from the 1950s and 1960s. He had dozens of beautiful, hand-painted, wood-carved or papier-mâché Santa Clauses and elves, many of which bend and twirl by mechanical means. These characters once graced the windows of Marshall Fields and Macy’s stores across the country. Now, they were in Struble’s driveway.
Of course, none of these collectables were meant to live outdoors, so Struble and his husband converted their three-car garage into a covered display space, augmented by a huge event tent and space heaters.
The first year, in 2020, Struble invited his neighbors – and they loved it. The project has since evolved to include a website, an Instagram page, and a formal name: The North Pole at Eagle Crest.
“Every year it just gets bigger and bigger,” he said. “It brings me a lot of joy and when people walk through it. It brings so much love and so much magic to not just the kids, but the adults come up to me too and are just like, ‘Oh my God, thank you so much for doing this.’”
The whirling, mechanical sounds of a retro Christmas greet visitors to the display, which now includes more than 40 vintage storefront Santas and elves across six scenes.
Struble, an interior designer by trade, creates elaborate, whimsical landscapes for his characters. Visitors can visit the stable with all of Santa’s animatronic reindeer bobbing their heads. In another scene, Santa smiles while visiting a trio of polar bears.
There’s also the elves’ workshop, composed of figures made by New York display designer David Hamberger, famous for the animated characters he sold to department stores from the 1960s through the 1980s. Packages ride by on a conveyor belt as the elves softly hammer, paint and saw in their toy shop, their arms slightly raising and lowering.
“There’s some sort of nostalgia behind it,” Struble said. “When I was a kid at Christmas time, we had a neighbor who would do a huge display every year. He had a Santa and a Mrs. Claus in a fruit stand that they made look like a little toy shop. It was really magical. You could get out and get a piece of candy and sign the guest book, and there was music playing. Ever since then, I’ve always been crazy into Christmas.”
What’s on display isn’t even the entirety of Struble’s growing Christmas collection. He finds new additions through online auctions and antique stores.
“I’ve gotten these relationships with people in the vintage world and antiques world, and if something does come up, or if they see something at a shop, they call me immediately,” he said. “I really enjoy buying them and if they need some work, I love to kind of bring them back to their original sparkle.”
Visitors can park along Eagle Crest Drive and walk down a long, shared driveway into the “North Pole,” where massive lighted snowflakes cover the house. But the real magic is inside the tent, where there’s seating around a fire table, free hot cocoa and complimentary cookies. There’s also a space where kids can write letters for Santa. If they leave a return address, they can expect a reply.
“It’s not so much a Christmas display, it’s a Christmas experience,” Struble said. “You enter, and you’ve walked into this magic little wonderland.”
Last year, Struble started a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, inviting people to donate to the charity via a QR code that takes visitors to the St. Jude website. Visitors to the North Pole at Eagle Crest raised $5,000 for the hospital in 2021, and Struble hopes to beat that figure this season.
“What could be better than being able to give to children and their families that are going through such hard times, especially around Christmas?” he said.
If you go: North Pole at Eagle Crest, 53 Eagle Crest Drive in Lake Oswego, is open 5-9 p.m. Dec. 9-11 and Dec. 16-18. Entry and hot cocoa are free, but donations are accepted for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. You can also donate directly at this link. More information at northpolepdx.org.
— Samantha Swindler
503-294-4031; sswindler@oregonian.com; @editorswindler
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