As Christmas quickly approaches, I thought I would write about one of my favorite Christmas movie and one man’s action that turned an iconic house into a museum. I am of course talking “A Christmas Story” from 1983. The film is from Jean Shepherd’s book “In God we trust: All Others Pay Cash.” The director was scouting 20 different cities that could resemble a town from the 1940s, and he settled in Cleveland. The rest they say is history, but in 2004 Brain Jones bought and restored the house to resemble the way it looked in the movie. Jones bought the house off of Ebay for $150,000. In 2006, the house opened as a museum and was a great success, with 4,000 visitors its first weekend.
For the past few years, they Christmas House Museum have held an auction for an overnight stay in the house over Christmas. So that you and your family can wake up and recreate scenes from the movie, for instance, like hiding under the kitchen sink. In 2010, the package was auctioned for $3,200. All of the proceeds from the auction go into a college savings plan for the museums children.
While not being your typical museum, it sure is a lot of fun. The traffic from the museum has brought in visitors from all over. They even detail how to get to the old Higbees in downtown. Although Higbees has been closed for years, they still do “A Christmas Story” window decoration. Also, there are directions to the old Chinese restaurant, which is now a modern café.
So if you are in Cleveland this winter, I would check it out!
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