“It’s great living here 50 weeks of the year.”
That’s what Toni Anderson’s husband, Jesse, loves to say about their decades spent living on Peacock Lane in Portland.
And no, he’s no Ebenezer Scrooge, he just likes to crack jokes.
Portland’s “Christmas Street,” Peacock Lane, becomes a street that any character from any holiday movie ever made probably would have wished they lived on. The homes, mostly in English Cottage or Tudor Revival styles, are adorned with holiday lights each year since about 1930. They are all on Southeast 40th Avenue, between Stark and Belmont streets.
One house is consistently decorated in the theme of “The Grinch,” and showcases a single veto vote against the annual decorating, in the true grumpy fashion of the iconic green, furry, pot-bellied creature.
Anderson moved to Peacock Lane in February 1984, when the home cost a whopping $60,200.
She and her husband both grew up locally, having visited the holiday street as children, but really fell in love with the home. The door looks like one belonging to Bilbo Baggins’ Hobbit-burrow, and the inside of the house is quaint. It’s far from the grandiose modern homes seen now.