A Beautiful Sight, He’s Happy Tonight, Hosting a Winter Wonderland : Mr. Christmas: Mervin Whipple got started 28 years ago with a few lights on the porch. That was then; this is now. Last December, his electric bill exceeded $4,000.

It all began with a few lights on the porch.

That was 28 years and thousands of light bulbs ago. In the ensuing decades, Mervin R. Whipple’s passion for yuletide decorations has cost him nearly $1 million, by his own estimation. It also has made him famous, at least locally.

In northeastern Connecticut, Whipple is known not just as a gravestone salesman, but as Mr. Christmas.

It is a title he has earned. Nearly a million people have come to see his ever-growing and electrifying Christmas wonderland.

Who’s counting? He is. In his left hand, held behind his back, Whipple clicks a mechanical counter every time a visitor passes through his door.

Donning one of his special red coats, he flipped the switch a month ago on the 106,000 lights and 362 life-size animated figures that are prancing and dancing around his home and adjacent office-showroom this season.

This year Whipple added three animated scenes, including a choir of white-haired angels. The angels, who resemble department store mannequins in white silky robes, set him back more than $4,000.

But the money seems to mean little to Whipple, a short, rotund man whose red cheeks and twinkling eyes would make him a perfect Santa Claus if he chose to play that part. Instead, he assumes the role of Mr. Christmas, the master of ceremonies at his annual celebration.

Standing at the door in his red jacket, with black piping, he looks like a fugitive from a Gilbert & Sullivan production. Each visitor is greeted with a handshake and a hearty “Merry Christmas.”

Last year, he said, he shook hands with 57,708 visitors.

Whipple spends almost 10 weeks setting everything up; the lights stay on five weeks.

When he’s not dabbling in Christmas decorations, Whipple runs a gravestone business and takes care of Killingly’s six cemeteries.

“We had to take more than 40 tons of granite out back to make room in my showroom for Christmas decorations,” he said. “I used to leave the granite blocks down here by the office, but I overheard some women saying I was trying to sell them, so now I get everything out of sight.”

He neither charges his visitors nor solicits donations. There is a small box in the showroom for anyone who might want to toss a dollar in, but Whipple says the donations don’t even begin to pay his electric bill, which was $4,123.38 last December.

Town Manager Tom Homan says Whipple’s yuletide extravaganza is a boon to Killingly, a community of 16,000.

“Mervin Whipple is an outstanding citizen and people come from all over New England to view his display,” he said.

Whipple’s wife, Barbara, isn’t quite as enthusiastic about her husband’s abiding passion.

“Don’t get me started,” she said as she walked through the office, which is filled with mechanical music boxes that play Christmas songs. “This is his thing, not mine; it’s something he does.”

Whipple gets help from several volunteers, including three men who take turns playing Santa Claus for the children. He calls his wife “my only obstacle.”

“She hates all the fuss,” he said. “But nothing is going to stop me as long as the good Lord lets me do this. I live for Christmas.”

It’s been that way, to an increasing degree, since 1967. That’s the year Whipple first strung a few dozen lights around the porch.

“Killingly used to have a Christmas lighting decoration contest back then,” he said. “I came in third the first year. I added some more lights the next year and came in second. Then, the third year, I added more lights and came in first.”

By then, he said, he had so many lights that he was appointed judge of the contest.

“I think they made me a judge to get me out of the contest,” he said. “But that didn’t stop me from getting more lights.”

Asked why he keeps adding lights and animated figures each year, Whipple has a simple answer.

“I have to keep adding new things or the people won’t come back. And, that would be terrible.”