The Connors family, formerly of Perris, is set to be featured on tonight’s episode of “The Great Christmas Light Fight” on ABC.
“I have reached out to them, I think, maybe four or five years…and I’d be like, ‘Look, this is my house. This is what I’m doing. I’d love for you to come out,’” Frank “Chris” Connors said. “And then finally they said they would finally come out, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, it finally paid off all these years of trying to contact them.’”
The show was filmed last November and really put Connors’ decorating abilities to the test.
“They told me, ‘Just put Christmas up,’” he said. “But I said I can’t do that because I have too many people that come and we have too many families that expect this and we see them year after year, so I made the decision to do Halloween, and then we ran out there and took it down the very next day and started switching to Christmas.”
In less than two weeks, the Connors family turned their entire house from Halloween to Christmas just in time for host and lifestyle expert Carter Oosterhouse to come by and film.
“It was a lot of paperwork, and we did it all,” Connors said. “But the amazing part was when that huge truck came up and they’re bringing their boom [microphones] and their equipment and the cameras.”
At one point, Connors said one of his children came out and accidentally dropped her cup of hot chocolate when she was coming out of the home and immediately ran back inside, upset that she had potentially messed something up during filming.
“In the middle of this, I’m talking to Carter,” Conners said. “I went back there, and I saw how upset she was, and then I came back out and I said, ‘Hey, Carter, let’s stop building for a second.’”
It was then that Oosterhouse went into the house to talk to Connors’ daughter.
“He was nice enough that he came into our house and he saw her and kneel down in front of her and said, ‘Look, everything is fine. Don’t worry about that,’” Connors said. “I said, ‘I’ve got plenty of hot chocolate,’ and then it made her day.”
After getting everything set up and ready to film, Connors said all that was left to do was show off the decorations the family worked so hard to get strung up in time.
“It was a really cool experience,” he said. “The only thing I didn’t care for was I wanted to turn the house on, because in the show, the host comes out, you turn the house on and everyone cheers.”
Stay up to date with the latest from The Record. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter today!
Connors said due to the popularity of the house, he wasn’t able to do that during filming, but the following week, the family held its own lighting ceremony for the entire community to kick off the holiday season.
Another thing that changed? The sign on the front of the house had to be switched out from the “City of Perris Griswold House,” to the City of Perris Connors House.”
One thing Connors doesn’t know, though, is who wins.
“They just tell you that one of the families is going to win, and you’ll find out when it airs,” he said.
According to the ABC Entertainment press site, each episode pits four families from across the nation against one another for a chance to win $50,000. In the first episode of Season 12, Connors will face off against the Campbell, Hughes and Foy families.
“I don’t know if I’m going to win or not, because it’s difficult for me to compete against someone that owns property,” Connors said. “So if they have, like, an acre of land that is totally decorated, I’m in a housing tract, you know. I don’t have that, although I would, I would totally decorate it that much if I could.”
The last time Connors spoke with The Riverside Record, the family was celebrating its ninth year decorating the home in the 100 block of Goldenrod Avenue in Perris, but now the Connors are taking on a new city — San Jacinto.
“We lived there for 12 years and we made it all the way to national [television],” Connors said. “I was like, you know, I think that’s a good point, and now we’ll start over out here and we’ll see where it takes us out here.”
The new Griswold House, now at 1935 Meridien St. in San Jacinto, will be open to the public from 5-9 p.m. every Friday through Sunday through the remainder of the month.
“We have the village walkthrough and the cafe,” Connors said. “The front is even more ridiculous. In fact, I even went and bought a snow machine.”
“The Great Christmas Light Fight” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. Episodes are available for streaming the next day on Hulu.
The Riverside Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet providing Riverside County with high-quality journalism free of charge. We’re able to do this because of the generous donations of supporters like you!