A Federal Judge Banned My Christmas Lights

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "A Federal Judge Banned My Christmas Lights"

Podcast: What It Was Like
Host: Julian Morgans
Guest: Jeremy Morris
Release Date: December 24, 2025

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Overview

This Christmas Day episode of "What It Was Like" explores not just the story of an elaborate Christmas lights display, but the decade-long legal and cultural battle sparked by it. Julian Morgans speaks with Jeremy Morris, the Idaho lawyer whose Christmas decorating turned into a symbol of the U.S. culture war—and ultimately landed him with a federal court order banning him from decorating his house with Christmas lights. Through personal reflection, confrontation, and a lens on broader cultural themes, the episode is part comedy of errors, part cautionary tale, and a candid look at what happens when personal tradition runs into community boundaries.

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Episode Structure & Key Discussion Points

1. Jeremy's Love of Christmas & Family Roots

• Childhood Influence:
  Jeremy grew up in Los Angeles in a deeply Protestant Christian family where Christmas was hugely significant, especially through his father's passion for Christmas lights.
  Quote (Jeremy Morris, 06:55):
  "My father was passionate about Christmas lights. And so I was raised in a very Protestant Christian atmosphere that just really celebrated Christmas, the birth of Christ... it was just put into me that this is a magical time of year."

• Estrangement & Nostalgia:
  Personal hardship and estrangement from his family in his late teens further cemented Christmas as a powerful nostalgic anchor.

2. Resistance to Authority—A Personal and Legal Stand

• Motivation:
  Julian probes Jeremy’s tendency to resist authority, linking it to childhood bullying and a resulting pursuit of law as a means of self-protection.
  Quote (Jeremy Morris, 08:43):
  "I was bullied... when you're older, you can't really just settle your differences in a parking lot. That's when you go to jail. But what's the modern version of defending yourself? Well, it's lawsuits... I didn't become a lawyer because I liked the law. I became a lawyer to protect myself."

3. From Local Tradition to National Event

• The Origin Event (2014):
  Jeremy covers his house in lights, organizes a choir, and even brings in a live camel. Expecting a small turnout, almost 1,000 people show up thanks to a viral Facebook post.
  Julian (11:24):
  "In the footage, you can see people spread out all over their front lawn and spilling out onto the road and the surrounding neighborhood."

• Permit Issues:
  The city let the first event slide, but warned Jeremy repeating it would require permits he likely wouldn't get.

4. The Move to Hayden Estates—and A Culture Clash Begins

• House Hunt with a Purpose:
  Seeking to sidestep city regulations, Jeremy finds his “ideal” home in West Hayden Estates on the city’s edge—with a big yard and plenty of space for displays.
  Jeremy (13:06):
  "It's very tall, built like a church... hard to put up Christmas lights, I can tell you. Anyway, so that's why we picked this house."

• The HOA Letter:
  Despite consulting the HOA’s rules, Jeremy’s plans crash into resistance—first through a polite warning, then a letter citing concerns that his Christian display could offend non-Christian neighbors.
  Julian (15:06):
  "The letter suggested that some of the residents... were non-Christians, so Jeremy's light display could offend them. And as you can imagine, Jeremy saw a deep Father Christmas shade of red."

  Key Quote (Jeremy, 15:23):
  "This is more, I think, about an attack on Western civilization."

5. Escalation: Evidence, Media Attention, and Threats

• Recording Calls:
  Jeremy records HOA calls (legal in Idaho), catching members admitting the issue is ideological, not just procedural.
  Quote (Neighbor, 17:08):
  "It’s because somebody in this association doesn’t like Christmas."

• Media & Militia:
  As the dispute escalates, it draws the attention of national media and even a local militia who show up at Jeremy’s press conference claiming to “protect” his Christmas lights.
  Jeremy (21:23):
  "A militia... with weapons, shows up walking across the property while the cameras are filming... obviously they had their own agenda."

• Neighbor Threats & Intimidation:
  Tensions lead not just to words, but vandalism, sabotage, and outright threats—including one neighbor allegedly threatening Jeremy with “we have ways of taking care of you.”
  Heated exchange (22:16–23:32).

6. The Event Becomes a Protest

• Bigger, Brighter, and Political:
  Despite hostility, Jeremy goes forward with his event—receiving support (including miles of donated custom lights) from allies and right-wing businesses, but also attacks from neighbors.
  Quote (Jeremy, 25:24):
  "Yeah, so I went ahead with it."

  Julian (26:37):
  "There's a sense—maybe I'm projecting—that everyone knows this isn't just about caroling. This is kind of like a political act. There's an air of protest in the celebration."

• Sabotage:
  Guests are harassed, lights are vandalized, and neighbors (including HOA board members) attempt to orchestrate fake accidents with a snowplow to create liability.

7. The Lawsuit and Its Aftermath—Ten Years in Court

• Filing Suit:
  In January 2017, while his baby is in the hospital, Jeremy files what he calls “the best damn lawsuit of my life," motivated by principle as much as retaliation.
  Jeremy (28:56):
  "My wife, with our son in a bubble is saying, 'leave, leave this hospital and file.' So I go home and for three straight days—I wrote the best damn lawsuit of my life. And that began a 10 year episode..."

• Case Outcome:
  After years of legal battle, millions spent, and a trek through multiple court levels—including the U.S. Supreme Court—the case settles in November 2025. Jeremy receives more than enough to cover his legal costs and describes it as "a pretty good payday." However, he is permanently banned from hosting Christmas displays on his property.

• Reflection: Was It Worth It?
  Despite the cost to his family, Jeremy insists he’d do it again—if not go even bigger.
  Jeremy (32:18):
  "I certainly lost everything I had financially. Everything gone. Nothing. I had nothing left until recently... So I come back with, yeah, I would do it again. There's pretty much nothing I would change. And I. Maybe I'd put up more lights."

8. Outwitting the Ban & Pop Culture References

• The Christmas Tree Car (Workaround):
  Jeremy recounts acquiring a car with a giant Christmas tree strapped on top from a local parade—a scene straight out of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”—as a loophole, mocking the court’s decision.
  Jeremy (33:52):
  "So they delivered this car with this tree and then we just let it sit out there for a long time... it was just sort of like, well, now what are you going to do?"

9. Final Thoughts: Culture Wars, Community, and Storytelling

• Julian’s Reflection:
  The host notes that the Apple TV+ documentary on the case is more sympathetic to the neighbors and critical of Jeremy, yet he personally sides with more celebrations, fewer lawsuits, and less red tape.
  Julian (36:15):
  "My honest takeaway is that I think there should be more parties in the world and fewer lawsuits... less red tape. But that's just me... Fighting anything for 10 years feels like too much."

  He closes on the importance of sharing human stories, showing how all sides feel embattled, especially in the context of today’s culture wars.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Jeremy on the broader meaning:
  "This is more, I think, about an attack on Western civilization." (15:23)

• On the lawsuit as a culture war:
  "For me, this is a cultural battle. It's a war. It's a culture war... would you be willing to lose everything you've ever had? I certainly lost everything I had financially. Everything gone. Nothing. I had nothing left until recently." (32:18)

• On not backing down:
  "Yeah, I would do it again. There's pretty much nothing I would change. Maybe I'd put up more lights." (32:18)

• On the pop-culture workaround:
  "So they delivered this car with this tree and then we just let it sit out there for a long time. And the joke was that this judge who said, you can't have this Christmas display and it was just sort of like, well, now what are you going to do? But it's like we had to fight back and we found ways to do it." (33:52)

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Notable Timestamps

• Jeremy describes first Christmas display: 11:35
• Initial confrontation with HOA: 14:24
• Neighbor’s ideology revealed in recorded call: 17:08
• Militia arrives to “protect” lights: 21:23
• Neighbor confronts Jeremy and threatens him: 22:45–23:32
• Lights vandalized and neighbors escalate sabotage: 24:16–25:19
• Reflection on legal battle and cost: 28:56–32:18
• Pop-culture workaround and car with tree: 33:52
• Julian’s final thoughts on culture wars: 36:15

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Tone & Style

• Jeremy is earnest, combative, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek in the face of frustration.
• Julian maintains a bemused, slightly weary observer’s tone, balancing critique with empathy.

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Summary Takeaway:
Jeremy Morris’ battle over Christmas lights becomes a symbol for the deep fractures in American cultural life—between tradition and pluralism, individual rights and community norms, festive excess and legal minutiae. The episode unfolds as both a modern parable and a human story, inviting listeners to reflect on where they would draw the line—and whether they would, as Jeremy did, see that fight through for nearly a decade.

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Transcript

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, what it was like listeners. Did you know that every week we release a whole other episode just for subscribers? Not just that, but subscribers get ad free episodes and access to the whole back catalog. You know, it's a good time. It's great. So if you're already a subscriber, thank you. Thanks for supporting the show. And for those who haven't subscribed yet, well, what are you doing? Not only will you get access to some great content, but you'll also be helping us to dig into the really hard stories that that blow your mind. So please hit subscribe on Apple or Spotify and join the club. You'll love it.

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[Jeremy Morris]

We were the only people in the history of the United States, maybe the world, ordered by a federal court not to have Christmas decorations. Okay? And this, this blasted for nine years, everything gone, Nothing. I had nothing left. So I'd come back with, yeah, I would do it again. There's pretty much nothing I would change. And maybe I'd put up more lights.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, I'm Julian Morgans and you're listening to what It Was like, the show that asks people who have lived through big dramatic events what it was like. Hey, Merry Christmas. We are publishing this on Christmas Day here in Australia. So it's probably Christmas or almost Christmas while you are too. Or if you're listening to this at some point in the future, then I hope you had a very nice Christmas in 2025. Now, obviously, this is going to be a Christmas story, but with a twist. On the surface, this is a story about Christmas decorations, but underneath that, I think it's really a story about the culture war that's been eating away at the west, and particularly especially the United States, for, I don't know, maybe the last decade. It's the conflict between the left and the right that just seems to keep escalating and getting more entrenched and just more exhausting year after year. And this story is a microcosm of that culture war. I'm speaking with a man named Jeremy Morris, who in 2014 put on an elaborate Christmas lights display on his home. And people loved it. So the following year, he and his wife decided to go even bigger. So big, in fact, that they bought a new house just specifically to host a really, really enormous display. That house was in a place called Hayden Estates, Idaho. And that's where things went really sideways, because Jeremy's neighbors didn't want a big, massive lights display on their street. They didn't want crowds or noise or extra traffic. And Jeremy, who just happens to be a lawyer, didn't take that very well. Threats of lawsuits followed. The neighbours threatened to countersue. And what began as a dispute over Christmas decorations spiralled into a long, bitter fight about literally everything else. And it's been almost 10 years and Jeremy is still fighting because to him, this isn't about Christmas lights. It's about civil liberties. It's about what he sees as a broader cultural assault on tradition, religion and his version of the American dream. And as you heard in the opening, he's not backing down. So I spoke to Jeremy to hear his side of the story, and we also reached out to Jeremy's former neighbours, too, but none of them got back to us. None of them agreed to speak. So their perspective is a little bit absent from this piece. But I'm going to be weaving in context and some archival material into our interview, so hopefully it all feels a bit more rounded now. This is a bizarre story, but I think. I think it's a funny one and it's also kind of exhausting, just like I said before. And I think it perfectly captures this political moment that all of us, but particularly Americans, find themselves living through at the end of 2025. So here's Jeremy Morris to tell it. Hey, Jeremy, welcome to the show.

[Jeremy Morris]

Good to be here.

[Julian Morgans]

Let's start with a couple of questions about the nature of you. Okay. Because this is a thing that most people don't get themselves involved in, but you did. I want to understand your motivations, your personality. So, first of all, what is it about Christmas that you love so much?

[Jeremy Morris]

Well, you know, I think growing up in Los Angeles, Christmas was particularly important to my family. So my father was passionate about Christmas lights. And so I was raised in a very Protestant Christian atmosphere that. That just really celebrated Christmas, the birth of Christ. So when someone asked me, well, you know, why do you love Christmas? It's like, well, all of it. Right. I think it was just put into me that this is a magical time of year. Now, what happened was, by the time I left home at the age of 18, I ended up living in a plastic tube at a fitness club in Sacramento, California, and no one knew where I was, and I was homeless and sort of became estranged from my family. And I think. I think the estrangement kind of elevates the experiences that I had as a child as far as their value to me. Right. And that's the. Maybe the only way I can kind of connect with my family is in my head, and that's thinking about those great times, you know, back at Christmas when I was a little one. And that's kind of how this whole thing ultimately evolved into a national event.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Well, international at this point. So the other part that I can see in this story is that you don't want to be told what to do. You don't want to back down when big government or a perceived bully tells you what to do. When I see that in friends and family, I'm wildly speculating here, but there's often some sort of childhood, you know, like bullying or some sort of, like antagonist in your past. Do you see any of that in your own youth, in your own childhood?

[Jeremy Morris]

Well, that's interesting. That's exactly what, what my childhood was. I, I was bullied. And I think when I grew up, I realized intuitively maybe that, hey, when you're older, you can't really just settle your differences in a parking lot. That's that, that's when you go to jail. Right. But you know, what's the modern version of defending yourself? Well, it's lawsuits. It's suing them. And so by the time I'm in college, this was something that was actually on my mind. I didn't become a lawyer because I liked the law. I became a lawyer to protect myself. And lo and behold, that's what the stars had aligned to. That was the destiny that would unfold.

[Julian Morgans]

Jeremy's destiny really started to unfold in 2014. It was at that point that he was a few years out of law school. He was living in Idaho, where he'd studied. He'd married a woman that he met in college, and they had a young child. And for the first time, he felt properly rooted. Now, for years, Jeremy had been quietly collecting antique Christmas lights. He'd been picking them up at garage sales and antique stores and then stashing them in the garage. And he always imagined that one day he'd decorate his house the way his dad did when he was growing up, although he just never quite got around to it. And then in 2014, a few things collided at once. His grandfather gave him a vintage cotton candy machine. And then he died not long after. And that loss, combined with having a family, a house, and finally the space to do it all properly, gave Jeremy a sense that these moments, they just, you know, they don't last forever. So he went all in. He covered the house in lights, he wrapped the trees. He organized a 36 person choir to come sing. He even organized a camel, like a real life camel, to come stand in a nativity scene. And he leaned fully into excess. As you'll hear later, Jeremy's hero is Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Kind of the patron saint of doing Christmas to a completely unreasonable degree. And Jeremy followed that example very closely. And then his wife had an idea. If they were going to do this, why not make it public? And Raise some money for children with cancer while they're at it. And Jeremy was like, that's an incredible idea. And they put the event up in a Facebook post inviting people to come by for a couple of hours. And they expected a handful of local families, you know, maybe 100, tops. But instead, almost a thousand people showed up.

[Verizon Promo Details]

Silent night.

[Julian Morgans]

That is the sound of the Morris family's 2014 Christmas event. And in the footage, you can see people spread out all over their front lawn and spilling out onto the road and the surrounding neighborhood.

[Jeremy Morris]

It was. For us, it was an act of God. It was a miracle. It was not something we asked for, that we planned. It was just sort of this thing that just happened to us. And women would come up to us and hug me and say, whatever you do, don't ever stop doing this, because this is this. This needs to happen forever. And I'm just like, well, how do I tell them I can never do this again because this is in a city that's telling me I'm violating the law. I didn't get permits.

[Julian Morgans]

What Jeremy means by that is that they never got approval from the city council to host a public event on this scale. And they got away with it just this first time because it was all completely organic. But a repeat would almost definitely get shut down. But then again, Jeremy's wife had an idea.

[Jeremy Morris]

December 27, wakes me up and says, I have an idea. Let's go look for a house. And by the end of that day, we'd only looked at three houses. We found what we believed would be the absolute perfect home to have this Christmas display. This. This thing that this community now said, we have to have this.

[Julian Morgans]

Jeremy knew that the perfect house would be outside their city, where he wouldn't have to worry about permits. So he found a house in West Hayden estates on the edge of the city, set way back from the street, with a large front yard that could host a giant crowd. But crucially, the house was big, with a giant frontage and lots of roofing that he could cover in lights.

[Jeremy Morris]

It's very tall, built like a church. The pitch on that roof, I don't know what it is, but it's a church pitch. And so hard to put up Christmas lights, I can tell you. Anyway, so that's why we picked this house.

[Julian Morgans]

So they put in an offer, and then they did one last crucial thing. Jeremy knew that the house was in something called a homeowners association, or a HOA for short. And homeowners associations are governed by something called c. CCNRS which means covenants, conditions and restrictions. And these rules basically dictate what a homeowner can and can't do to their own property. So we got a copy of the home CCNRs, and he and two of his lawyer buddies pored all over the rules just to make sure before he bought the house that there would be nothing to stop his Christmas event.

[Jeremy Morris]

These two lawyers agreed with me. There's nothing in here that would prevent someone from having a two hour long from 6 until 8 gathering to raise money for children on your own lawn. And so we went ahead with a.

[Julian Morgans]

Purchase just as a courtesy. Jeremy also called the president of the West Hayden Estates Homeowners association just to get her across the plan. And they had a quick, polite conversation and then they hung up. And he thought, well, this is going really well. Smooth sailing from here.

[Jeremy Morris]

And then she calls me back a couple of days later and says, well, I went to the board, they're never gonna let you do this. And so at this point, you know, I just said, well, I'm going to, you know, there's. You can't stop it, you understand? You can't control, you know, me from doing this is like my property, but it's going to be my property. And so shortly after I tell her that, we get a letter and I open it up and I'm looking at this and I call my wife. And I said, we have a big problem. And that, that was, quote, we're hesitant to bring up the fact that some of our residents are non Christians or people of another faith. And we don't even want to think.

[Julian Morgans]

Of the problems that that would bring up non Christians. The letter suggested that some of the residents of West Hayden Estates were non Christians, so Jeremy's light display could offend them. And as you can imagine, Jeremy saw a deep Father Christmas shade of red.

[Jeremy Morris]

This is more, I think, about an attack on Western civilization.

[Momentous Supplement Advertiser]

Wow.

[Jeremy Morris]

It's like, well, you know, well, we need to be, you know, considerate of other peoples and other beliefs. It's like, yeah, but I don't go to Saudi Arabia and go, listen, you have this black, you know, curtained area with a, I guess a meteor. Mohammed said, hey, we're going to march around this thing and we're going to build this. I don't go, hey, I'm in Saudi Arabia now. Everyone stop. No, it's like, no, that's their culture. So America has a culture, Australia has a culture. Anyway, long story short is we, we get this letter and I tell them we have a big problem and I start recording my phone calls.

[Julian Morgans]

What Jeremy means is that he started recording the calls with his neighbors and other members of the West Hayden estates Homeowners Association. Idaho follows a 1 party consent rule for recording phone calls, meaning that any one person can record a call just as long as they're on it. And this is really where the fight kicks off because they didn't realize they were being recorded. And a few of them actually admitted that their opposition or the group's opposition to Jeremy's event wasn't really about rules. It was actually just about ideology.

[Jeremy Morris]

They didn't want your beliefs pressed on.

[Julian Morgans]

Anybody in the neighborhood. So you can't have any Christmas lights or Christmas music.

[Jeremy Morris]

You can't do that.

[Julian Morgans]

So Jeremy actually shared a few of these calls with me and I'll. And I'll play you my favorite one. It's this in which his neighbor is sharing his own private view that this whole thing is actually kind of about people hating Christmas and it doesn't pertain.

[Jeremy Morris]

To Halloween lights or any other form.

[Julian Morgans]

I agree.

[Jeremy Morris]

So then why did they come after?

[Verizon Advertiser]

It's because somebody in this association doesn't like Christmas.

[Jeremy Morris]

Boom.

[Julian Morgans]

Did you hear Jeremy say boom at the end? He obviously decided that this was great evidence. And I feel like the other neighbors in these calls, they're really underestimating him. I mean, they know he's a lawyer, but I feel like they've overlooked the fact that he's this highly evolved apex predator and they're making remarks to him that they think are all in private. And, you know, we're all just buddies here and it's all fine, but they're totally undermining their own position. Now we're going to take a quick ad break here, but stay with us because we're going to be right back to hear more about how Jeremy's event actually went down.

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[Julian Morgans]

Hey, welcome back. Okay, so Jeremy has bought a house in the West Hayden Estates where he's already got into a fight with the homeowners association.

[Verizon Promo Details]

But.

[Julian Morgans]

But he hasn't even moved in yet and his wife actually thought that they should abandon the whole plan. Apparently his pastor also tried to warn him from moving in because it was going to place stress on the whole family. But Jeremy is a man of principles. So in March, they moved in and, and it was quiet. Nothing happened. But then also at the same time, no one came over to introduce themselves. The neighbors kept their heads down and the months went by in this kind of passive aggressive silence. Now, at this point in the timeline, it's October. So Jeremy starts putting up his lights. But then another letter arrives in his mailbox from the HOA's attorney, warning him that these lights will be, quote, offensive to the senses, end quote. And it threatens legal action and gives him 10 days to respond. But instead of backing down, Jeremy starts emailing the media and now Fox News, which, as you know, they love a good war on Christmas story. They lapped it up. And then the story took on a life of its own.

[Jeremy Morris]

Abc, CBS, and NBC, these are all the three major networks. Do a press conference on my lawn. It was incredible. I'd never done anything like this. And while I'm in the middle of this press conference, a militia. I didn't know any of these people. I mean, an actual, like militia with weapons shows up walking across the property while the cameras are filming. And obviously they had their own agenda.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so picture a DIY militia with big guns. I don't know anything about guns, but they look like M16s to me. And they're strapped across their chests and they're wearing beanies and Oakley sunglasses. Now, these people, they call themselves the Three percenters of Idaho. And according to their Facebook bio, they are, quote, a small number of dedicated patriots protecting Americans from big government. And they'd showed up to protect Jeremy's Christmas lights.

[Jeremy Morris]

I politely said, I really don't need your protection. But after those people showed up, one of these neighbors a couple nights later comes across the road and said, you think that group, that militia group can protect you? I have guns. I have weapons, explosives. There's other people on the street that have guns and weapons, you know, and we, you know, we have a way of taking care of you. And then that's when I started filming the thing, threatening.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

I have every right to stand.

[Jeremy Morris]

No, you're not calm.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

I'm not on your property, sir.

[Jeremy Morris]

You are not calm.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

I don't care.

[Julian Morgans]

Here's the recorded audio from that altercation. Jeremy claims that the man had threatened him before he started filming. So what you hear here is just a man denying his own threats.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

I don't care if I'm not.

[Jeremy Morris]

You are harassing my husband.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

Harassing your husband?

[Jeremy Morris]

Yes, you are. You just threaten.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

Are you a lawyer, too? You must go on to shame shy back.

[American Red Cross Announcer]

You just threatened him.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

I didn't threaten him nothing.

[Jeremy Morris]

Yes, you did. You said you take care of him.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

That doesn't mean nothing.

[Jeremy Morris]

You said we have other ways. You said you have.

[Neighbor/Confrontational Man]

I may come over and offer him a hug. That's how I'm going to take care of him. And you just keep taping and filming. Typical. You guys ought to leave now, cuz.

[Jeremy Morris]

These people are idiots.

[Julian Morgans]

So.

[Momentous Supplement Advertiser]

Okay, see you later.

[Jeremy Morris]

You all right?

[Julian Morgans]

Yep, I'm good.

[Jeremy Morris]

Okay. You showed up at an interesting time. Yeah. Honey, stay over here.

[Julian Morgans]

I hear this, and I think that for me personally, at this point, I'd have just walked away. I don't like fights. I don't like fights about anything. I'd much rather live in simmering frustration for years at a time than just have one short single fight. But not Jeremy. He couldn't let this go. And so he continued to set up his display and his neighbors shifted from threatening him on his driveway to all out guerrilla warfare.

[Jeremy Morris]

They would vandalize my lights as I put them up. They would tear them down off trees. One person hooked them up to a truck and drove the truck down the road pulling the trees. And the. Some of These trees were 60ft tall.

[Julian Morgans]

But just as the Idaho militia stepped in to protect Jeremy, now various right wing businesses stepped in to provide their goods and services for free.

[Jeremy Morris]

People from all over the world begin donating Christmas lights to our show. Someone said, wait, we have a sleigh we want to donate. And, and then someone donates another sleigh. And, and then someone from AS business in China said, hey, I, you know, I do work with electrical circuitry or whatever in China and I'd like to just donate. I've heard what they're trying to do to you. 10 miles of Christmas lights that we're just going to manufacture for you. These aren't Christmas lights. These are, we're just going to make these lights.

[Momentous Supplement Advertiser]

Wow.

[Jeremy Morris]

For you. So I, I don't know how many people have Christmas lights made for them.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, bespoke Christmas lights.

[Jeremy Morris]

So it just, it just, yeah, so just evolved from there.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so take me to the event itself. I mean, you went ahead with it. How did it go?

[Jeremy Morris]

Yeah, so I went ahead with it.

[Julian Morgans]

So when I'm looking at this footage, it seems to me somehow wilder and more determined than the year before. I think the lights alone just scream effort. Jeremy's entire three story house is wrapped so completely in Christmas lights that it, that it just glows. You know, across the street from down the road, it just glows. It's kind of like when you see an air force base from miles away. You just see this dome of white around it. That's Jeremy's house. And also imagine every tree is lit up, every ceiling spare surfaces filled. There are statues, decorations, installations. The whole thing looks less like a home and more just like a high budget Hollywood Christmas set. But it's the people that really stand out. Watching the footage, there's a sense and I don't know, maybe I'm projecting, but everyone knows that this isn't just about caroling. This is kind of like a political act. There's an air of protest in the celebration. And you can hear this, you can see this in just how people are behaving. For example, in one clip, Jeremy even tells the crowd that the footage that he's recording will likely end up in a courtroom someday.

[Jeremy Morris]

I'm sure this will be in a courtroom one day. Go ahead. You know what? Oh, yeah, okay, we're stopping there. We'll go ahead and send a message to you because we love it and it's beautiful and thank you for what you do. I appreciate it.

[Julian Morgans]

Such a blessing.

[Jeremy Morris]

What a great thing for our community.

[Julian Morgans]

So you can hear that Jeremy had his guests support, but these guests also became targets for attack from Jeremy's neighbors.

[Jeremy Morris]

They would follow women, hit their cars. One person got on the bus, you know, cussing and pushing children on a bus, another person throwing snowballs. And then ultimately a group of them, including board members, tried to stage a fake accident with a snowplow. And so what they would do is we had six buses to pick up people and bring them to our place because there were thousands, quite literally thousands of people. And these neighbors are plotting to hit the bus with a snowplow, you know, and stage a fake accident. So every time a bus would come by, they would have the plow go toward the bus, and then the person driving the plow would throw his hands up and go, ah, you know, and the lady down in the ditch is on the board the HOA with a camera filming to try and capture how the buses are now hitting members of the, you know, people who live in this neighborhood. And the thing is, what they didn't know is that all these people driving the buses thought it was hilarious because they're all watching this and radioing each other like, here they come again. You know, so they're all watching and observing these. This snowplow thing. But after that happened and after the people were throwing snowballs at buses, I just go, this is dangerous. Someone's going to get killed.

[Julian Morgans]

Luckily, no one got killed. Jeremy's Christmas festival was mostly problem free. And he actually held it the following year in 2016, which again attracted protests and sabotage from his neighbors. And at this point, Jeremy decided to launch an actual lawsuit against the homeowners association. It was January of 2017, and he and his wife were actually at the hospital with their baby son who was really sick. And Jeremy looked at the clock and crunched the numbers, and he realized that if they ever wanted to sue, then they had to do it within just a few days due to the statute of limitations.

[Jeremy Morris]

So I'm going, wow, we're now like a few days away and I'm there with my son and my wife says, go, go file it. And so a lot of people say, how? What a horrible man. What have you done? Your poor wife? And I go, oh my goodness, if only they knew. My wife, with our son in a bubble is saying, leave, leave this hospital and file. So I go, I go home and for three, three straight days with like no sleep, quite literally three days. And I wrote the best damn lawsuit of my life. And that began a 10 year episode. Went from one court all the way up to the US Supreme Court, which batted it down to the appellate court which partially agreed with me. It just went on. And this whole thing just cost on all sides, millions in the millions of dollars.

[Julian Morgans]

We're going to take a quick ad break here, but when we come back, I'm going to ask Jeremy, was this actually worth it?

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[Julian Morgans]

Welcome back. So Jeremy's lawsuit has only just wrapped up. It ended in November of this year, 2025, with a settlement that, according to Jeremy, more than covered his legal fees. And he wouldn't tell me the exact figure, but he described it as a pretty good payday. Still, that payday came after 10 years of intense stress. And I asked him the obvious question, was it worth it? And Jeremy admits that it's been hard on his family, but basically, he says he'd do it all again.

[Jeremy Morris]

This has greatly affected my family. And so, you know, I go, I've struggled with this, right? Is it worth it? And even though I realize that is a principle, you know, your love and your commitment to your family, I've come back to this thing that. This postulated idea, which is, you know, the American Revolution. I'm not someone who fought, you know, in a war and left my family, you know, but when I think of it in that context, I go, yeah, I think we can all say, yeah, some things are worth fighting for, fighting for freedom, fighting as someone might have done when they volunteered in a war, Right? And so for me, this is a cultural battle. It's a war. It's a culture war. And so I think you can use a paradigm like war to kind of think of this as, would you be willing to lay down your life? Would you be willing to give up everything? Would you be willing to lose everything you've ever had? I certainly lost everything I had financially. Everything gone. Nothing. I had nothing left until recently. But, you know, so I come back with, yeah, I would do it again. There's pretty much nothing I would change. And I. Maybe I'd put up more lights.

[Julian Morgans]

So there you go. He'd do it again. But Jeremy was banned from ever decorating his house in lights again. But as you might have guessed, he's just thought of a way to get around that.

[Jeremy Morris]

And so there's this film in the United States called Christmas Vacation, okay? And it's about this family called the Griswolds. And Clark W. Griswold does everything to the extreme. So a lot of people call me Clark Griswold nickname. And so in the film, there's a famous scene where they go out to get the Christmas tree. And of course, he wants the biggest one, and that's. That's that's me to a T. And so the next scene, you see this, what they call the family truckster. It's kind of this long station wagon from like the 80s or something with this massive pine tree lying on top of the car with the roots. It's an iconic American film that's the quintessential Christmas comedy that pretty much every American has. So we're watching this parade and I'm thinking about how awful it is that this judge has, you know, has done this to our family and said, you can't have this Christmas display, right? And we see this parade, this car, that's the car from the film. It's like that car that a crane company had taken a massive, you know, probably 60 foot tree, yanked it out of the ground, right, and dropped it onto a car, destroyed the car, right? And then they put this car kind of as a float with this tree on top and it's going through this parade. So I'm watching this thing and I go, well, that's not a Christmas decoration. Those aren't Christmas lights. It's a car with a tree on. Everyone knows what it means, right? So my wife's with these kids and I just start chasing this float. You know, I'm running down the highway and so I'm running after and they get a red light and I catch up with the car. I, you know, I'm wet, I'm covered in mud. And I said, hey, where are you taking this thing? He said, oh, yeah, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna dump this, you know, over a landfill. You know, I said, okay, could you deliver this to my house? And they, you want me to deliver this to your home? So they delivered this car with this tree and then we just let it sit out there for a long time. And the joke was that this judge who said, you can't have this Christmas display and it was just sort of like, well, now what are you going to do? But it's like we had to fight back and we found ways to do.

[Julian Morgans]

It and that's where the story its. Today in 2021, Apple released a feature length documentary about the case. And I think what's interesting is that the documentary is pretty sympathetic to the neighbors and more critical of Jeremy. And I get that. I think Jeremy has said some genuinely awful things to some unpaid HOA volunteers. You know, people with kids, mothers with mortgages, their own personal pressures. And at times, Jeremy, this fully trained professional lawyer, his behaviour was a little, I don't know, a little unhinged but my honest takeaway is that I think there should be more parties in the world and fewer lawsuits, less police intervention, less red tape. But that's just me. I'm the kind of guy where if it's 3am and if I hear someone throwing a party downstairs, my instinct is to think, God bless them. I just like people getting together. I like celebration. I like social cohesion more than I like social control. That said, I would have quit long before Jeremy did. Fighting anything for 10 years feels like too much. And that's probably where I land on the culture wars too. Just more broadly, I think I rarely pick sides on this show because I don't think constant fighting leads anywhere useful. I don't think tribalism leads anywhere useful. But what I do believe in is just telling human stories, like letting people speak for themselves. Just showing how everyone winners, losers, victims, villains, everyone feels like they're struggling in their own way. And I guess that's my flawed, imperfect, but personal response to the culture wars. So thanks for listening today. That wraps up our final episode of the year and I got to just like we won't have any subscriber episodes for the next two weeks. I'm on holiday, but I'm going to see you next year and we're going to do it all over again. And it's to going to be a lot of fun. Right here on what It Was like. What It Was like is produced by Rachel Tuffrey. This episode was edited by Ellie Dickey, who also does our research. Our cover art is by Rich Akers. Our theme music was produced by Jimmy Saunders and this whole thing has been a super real production.

[Momentous Supplement Advertiser]

Foreign.

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