December 18, 2025 | Mark Luis Foster
Promos for an ABC-TV show tonight called The Great Christmas Light Fight got me thinking about the latest headlines of the struggles of HOAs across the country with holiday lights. Sometimes residents don’t fly by the rules, meaning that lighting schemes in location and quantity can violate the spirit and intent of the governing documents. We see this every year, a perennial crisis that media love to cover. Once again like clockwork, the news is filled with reports about such HOA lights that are not exactly, ahem, glowing…
Here are some samples of latest headlines:
They are encouraging it’: HOA holds decoration contest with ‘Griswold’ category, then threatens family with fine due to glare from lights
‘We stand with Santa!’ | HOA puts giant inflatable Santa on naughty list, sparking holiday debate in Colorado town
Maryland family fined by HOA over Christmas lights
‘Grinches are gonna hate’: Maryland family fined for their Christmas lights
I have often wondered what others think of the “tourist attraction” attempts by some neighborhoods that coordinate lighting schemes across multiple yards, homes and in some extreme cases, full city blocks and cul de sacs, that are so bright they can be seen from space. There’s a neighborhood in Farmington, MN, that includes giant Santas, backlit reindeers, blinking lights in trees and rooflines that are all synced to music that you can listen to on a low-power AM radio station from the comfort of your vehicle that is stuck in a long line of never-ending cars. How those neighbors leave their driveways to run an errand is beyond me. They must convert to a daytime-only exit strategy. My wife and I fell for it and visited the spectacle. At least the neighbors on the street were collecting money from visitors for donations to a food shelf, so hopefully that salves any bad feelings among grinchy, unappreciative neighbors.
In our HOA, we have rules that essentially state the lights must be restricted to tree decoration (meaning lights can be in your front yard tree and bushes) but not on rooflines or the structure of the home. They can be illuminated the week before Thanksgiving and must be extinguished (but not de-installed) by January 15. I like the January 15 rule because nothing goes from “quaint” to “out of date” in the new year faster than holiday lights.
Such lighting problems are akin to July 4 firework spectacles. The police tend to turn a blind eye on July 4 so that residents can destroy their stash of aerial fireworks that they bought in other states to show off in front of friends and relatives who are armed with a cold one and a lawn chair on the driveway. One could argue that noise and trash become a problem, squarely against HOA rules. But what’s a board to do?
I bring these things up to demonstrate that boards are often in the crosshairs. There are times on the calendar where beaming lights and aerial fireworks are expected and well intended. But like anything, too much of a good thing can lead to complaints, bad feelings, and worse yet, media coverage that HOAs simply do not need. Are your HOA neighbors complying with such rules? Let us know.
