What does Christmas mean to you? Is it Pacman in a Santa hat? A mouse in a spacesuit? A hippo with a tray of freshly-baked cookies?
These are just some of the items which make up Geoff Stonebanks’ festive collection. For more than 60 years he has amassed Christmas-themed curiosities from across the globe. The keen gardener boasts 2,500 baubles and 32 artificial trees.
‘My collection is eclectic,’ Geoff tells Metro from his home in Seaford, near Brighton. The fire roars as his rescue dog Chester listens intently to the conversation. Pointing at his Christmas tree, Geoff says: ‘There’s a Cadillac with a flamingo, a bottle of champagne on ice, a greenhouse. Each decoration I pick up or get gifted is a sentimental memory to me. I get so upset if something breaks. But it’s inevitable something will [break] each year, there’s not a lot you can do about that.’
The Stonebanks house is typically decorated in the last week of November and tidied away by early January.
When Metro visits on a breezy December morning, tinsel and decorations trail through Geoff’s bungalow and colourful poinsettias grow proudly on tabletops. There are three large Christmas trees up in his home this year; one in the living room, another in the dining room and another in the garden.
‘I’m a bit of a perfectionist,’ Geoff, 71, admits. ‘It can take up to nine hours to put up my tree. There’s probably about 1,500 fairy lights. Two strings [of fairy lights] spiral round the tree while another zig zags up, to give you the “dazzling” effect of the lights.
‘Then the tinsel has to be looped evenly round the tree, followed by the beads. Then there are probably 300 or 400 decorations added. I take time to stand back and look for the best place to put them.’
With quarterly bills, Geoff says it’s ‘impossible’ to work out how much the lights cost each December, but it can’t be cheap.
He estimates his collection is worth around £10,000. Older items include a Woolworths angel from the sixties, a vintage Christmas tablecloth which belonged to his grandmother and a small pottery snowman he made at school in the late fifties. More recent additions include official White House decorations, painted oyster shells from Kent and a St Albans Cathedral bauble.
Outside of December, the smorgasbord of decorations are confined to 40 crates in the attic Geoff shares with partner Mark, an artist who is less partial to all things Christmas. ‘He’s learned to live with it,’ laughs Geoff, a former Royal Mail manager.
There are diverse reactions to his Christmas collection, with Scrooges of varying degrees casting their opinions. Geoff has faced comments online like ‘Billy no mates’ and been described as ‘so weird’ for talking about his decorations. ‘Some of the reactions are quite bizarre. I’ve learned over the years not to read the comments,’ he sighs.
For Geoff, his decorations simply park joy. He wants to share that joy with anyone who might be tickled by the more unique items on his trees. They also remind him of his childhood at his parent’s Cotswolds pub, the Dolphin in Oxfordshire.
He explains: ‘As a boy, I would put decorations up with my mum when she decorated. I really enjoyed it so she let me get on with things. The Dolphin always opened on December 25 so single people and the elderly had a place to be. Because of the pub, Christmas was always a bit odd for us growing up. We had to get things set up and fill the bottles behind the bar before we sat down as a family and opened presents.’
Geoff’s favourite decoration was made by his paternal grandmother, Elsie Stonebanks in 1963. It’s a small Pierrot figure made from a ping pong ball, a bit of felt and a couple pipe cleaners.
‘Some are really quite special,’ Geoff explains, as he gently plays with a couple of baubles gifted from a friend who visited Poland. ‘Christmas to me now is nostalgia and enjoyment. I do enjoy taking all these things out and remembering where they came from, especially the older ones I remember from my childhood.
When Geoff left home in the seventies, he began to buy his own decorations. When his parents retired in 1987, he inherited the ones they had at the pub. Some, he admits, he had to wash to rid them off the smell of cigarette smoke.
It’s been a difficult year for Geoff, who awaits a knee operation which has limited his other passion: gardening. He has also witnessed his 97-year-old mum, Barbara, be moved into a nursing home. But he’s made sure to enhance her room with some of the older decorations in his collection, the ones which would have hung proudly at the Dolphin Public House.
Geoff also takes decorations when he goes on holiday, such as one Christmas spent near Inverness where he brought a box of baubles and small trees with him.
But the pensioner is aware that, one day, he’ll have to decide the future of his special items.
‘This collection is vast for a private house,’ Geoff says. ‘People keep saying “what will happen to it when you’re not here anymore?” I did approach several museums but the majority weren’t interested unfortunately. So I’m back to square one.’
The 71-year-old doesn’t do private tours of his Christmas display, due to the fact that during the summer he has kept busy with his award-winning garden ‘Driftwood By Sea’ which has raised thousands for charity.
As a result of his collection, Geoff has been branded ‘the most festive man in Britain.’ He has appeared on the Jeremy Vine Show, Sky News and This Morning, been interviewed on German TV show Mittags Magazine and featured in the pages of Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.
As Geoff says himself: ‘All in all, quite an amazing backstory for my 60 year addiction to Christmas decorations.’
To find out more about Geoff’s Christmas collection, click here.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk
Share your views in the comments below.
MORE: Apocalyptic Christmas carnage as Cindy’s EastEnders affair explodes with huge consequences
MORE: Who was the real Father Christmas and why are archeologists trying to dig up his grave?
MORE: The best Christmas gifts for your dad, stepdad or father-in-law 2024
