The Best Holiday Movie House is Todd and Margo's in ‘Christmas Vacation’
Production designer Stephen Marsh shares details from the iconic film's set design
I once interviewed Julia Louis-Dreyfus via phone, the night before Thanksgiving. She was busy — I could tell, because of the clatter of pots and pans in the background but also, because she told me.
“I’m baking a pie,” she said, almost in disbelief.
A couple of beats later: “Who the Hell do I think I am deciding to bake a pie?”
She laughed and I laughed, too. It was such a funny, offhand moment and one that really resonated with me. Don’t holiday get-togethers make us all feel like we bit off more than we could chew?
It also made me chuckle because something about her delivery was so similar to this iconic line read in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation:
Margo — the character Louis-Dreyfus plays in Christmas Vacation — and her husband, Todd, are the antiheroes of the film.
The Griswalds, lead by Chevy Chase’s Clark, are all American. They cut down their own Christmas tree, they string their own lights, and they are the ones baking the pies for their family members to enjoy come Christmas dinner. Of course, Clark never does any of it well, exactly. But he tries, and he is the all-American family man for making a valiant effort.
Todd and Margo, meanwhile, don’t have a tree. They don’t have children. They are basically the dictionary definition of a DINK — dual income, no kids — couple. It’s unclear what they do, exactly, other than that it affords them the leisurely time to work out midday (in matching silver gym uniforms, no less). Pies? No. They do margaritas and charcuterie, instead. If they were living next to the Griswalds in 2025, they would be sipping oat milk lattes, nibbling gluten-free everything, and switching on their Bottega Veneta x FLOS lamps come nighttime.
I adore Todd and Margo and I love that the design of their home perfectly demonstrates how different they are from the all-American family next door. It’s all sharp edges, it’s a little sterile, and it’s as modernist as the characters’ wardrobes.
So, in an effort to learn more about the interior design of arguably the most iconic Christmas film ever, I spoke to the man who made it happen: Stephen Marsh, production designer of Christmas Vacation (with a host of other credits under his belt, including one of my all-time faves: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead).
Marsh was able to give me details about both Todd and Margo’s home and the set design of the film at large. And boy, did I learn a lot. So much so, that I will be sharing more from our conversation in the coming weeks.
But for now, let’s look at how Todd and Margo’s house came to be.
Todd and Margo’s House Wouldn't Exist Without Lethal Weapon
As Marsh explains, Christmas Vacation was filmed at the Warner Brother’s Ranch, a lot in Burbank, California comprised of a curved residential road lined with a variety of suburban homes, a large neighborhood park and a swimming pool.
Homes on the lot aren’t actual homes, but just facades of homes — there’s a front and sides, and the back is just corrugated metal. An old film set was torn down to make way for the Griswald house but one home already on the lot was reconfigured for use as Todd and Margo’s home.
But, there was a problem.
“The house was the house from Lethal Weapon,” Marsh says. “When we inherited that set, they had blown a toilet through the roof and left the toilet on the lawn, thank you very much.”
The Set Designers Were Tasked With Creating 'The Yuppies’ House Next Door”
“We had a lot of fun with the design of the house,” Marsh says. “We called it ‘the yuppies’ house next door.’ ”
After the designers removed the toilet from the yard and fixed the roof, they then had to make the house look different than it had previously (so no one would actually realize it was the same house from Lethal Weapon).
“The exterior we managed to disguise by adding Palladian windows and stairs,” Marsh adds. “The interior, meanwhile, was a very modern interior and of course a juxtaposition with the Griswald’s home.”
Todd and Margo’s Home is All About Angles — and Wax
As Marsh notes, “all the rounded corners are in the Griswald house. All the sharp angles are in the neighbors’ house.”
“It was done purposely — we wanted the angles to be there. They are sharp to match the characters. Everything has to be clean and neat with them — these are the type of people to say, ‘Let’s make love, but only after we shower.’ They are altogether different from the Griswald’s mess next door.”
Not only did the interiors help define Todd and Margo, but the costuming also played a big role. Marsh notes that costume designer Michael Kaplan “had such a sense of humor in his costumes — the clothes in the film are so funny.”
Also funny? The infamous scene in which Clark Griswald falls off his roof while putting up Christmas lights. On his way down, he grabs onto a gutter, causing a large icicle to crash through Todd and Margo’s window next door — and into their high-end stereo system, completely destroying it.
Marsh says that the budget constraints were such that he and the design team couldn’t just blow up the stereo in Todd and Margo’s house — so they created two wax versions and destroyed those instead.
“They had a Bang and Olufsen stereo and the director wanted to blow it up with an icicle. But we had rented the stereo — we didn’t have the budget to blow it up,” Marsh explains. “So, the version that blows up in the movie is actually a wax stereo we made to scale.”
A huge thank you to Stephen Marsh for speaking to me about the set design of Christmas Vacation. As mentioned above, lots more to come on the behind-the-scenes of designing the iconic film set — with so many fun tidbits to share!
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I clicked because this is my husbands favorite movie. Never saw it before marrying him and I’ve watched it every Christmas for 17 years. lol
So interesting! This is one of my all time fave films