T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar: Day 19 - 'Twas The Fight Before Christmas

 2021, d. Becky Read - AppleTV

Anything can be spun into a hot-button, political, us-versus-them issue.  

Anything.  

All it takes is one unscrupulous individual to do so, and to do so loudly enough that other unscrupulous individuals take the bait.

Even decorating one's house for Christmas can be spun into a highly vocal case of religious discrimination that gets plastered on the national news and bumped all the way up to the Supreme Court.  

'Twas The Fight Before Christmas is an exhausting movie, and I only had to experience an hour and a half of the manufactured drama that one Jeremy Morris has inflicted upon his North Idaho neighbours for half a decade.  The events of the movie all occur because Morris is not only too selfish and too egocentric to compromise, but he moved into the neighbourhood of West Hayden Estates not holding a hand in friendship but swinging a big stick already prepped for a fight.  He effectively baited a whole neighborhood into feeding his persecution complex, and then trumped up both his victimhood and his heroism by staging a media circus that brought an armed alt-right militia group to the neighbourhood which he didn't turn away.

The documentary opens innocuously with Morris portrayed as a fun-loving guy who loves Christmas so much that he can't help but want to celebrate it with an inarguably impressive, arguably ludicrous, display of lights that he has to start prepping 3 months in advance.  It's his thing.  He talks about how a lot of people advised him against doing this documentary, thinking it would make him look like a crazy person, and, well, they weren't wrong.  But it's not "crazy" in the way he's thinking "crazy".

He's presented in his talking head with a lot of energy, a big beaming smile, and a festive wardrobe, sitting in his storage locker packed full of Christmas decorations which, he sadly relays, he's legally not allowed to use anymore.  But the hyperbole starts instantly "I'm the only American, probably the only person in the world, who has been banned by a federal court from decorating for Christmas."  It's an innocuous statement made in the first 2 1/2 minutes of the film, but it's truly a warning sign of things to come from Morris for the remainder of story.  "I don't need these things to have Christmas, but the fact that they would try to take this away, we live in America, I'm not going to let that happen."

It's hard to avoid the sense of privileged, white entitlement that is on display in the opening half hour.  At first we're given in to thinking that what Morris is doing is just celebratory, just an objectively excessive extension of his personality which he wants to portray as "giving".  He's a devout Christian who has loved Christmas displays since infancy and has been doing them the better part of his life.  He took inspiration from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, asserting that perhaps Clark Griswold was thinking too small. In 2014 he put his plan into action and posted it to Facebook, the number of visitors quickly ranked in the thousands.  His first thought was to make it bigger, getting a camel, a choir, and more. His wife suggested that they should set up a charitable donations bin (and I need to stress that it's Kristy Morris that makes that suggestion).  The celebration of lights lasts for 8 manic days, each day the city calling to advise that what he's doing is illegal.

Morris points out, repeatedly, he is a lawyer, and he knows the law.   The law doesn't apply here.

But he recognizes that operating this Christmas house (only the house itself was the inspiration for last year's Hallmark movie The Christmas House) within city limits is going to be problematic, plus the house is too small for the size of display he wants so they go searching for a new house, and they find one in 2015 in West Hayden Estates that seems perfect.  It's just outside city limits, it's a quiet neighbourly street.  Kristy is immediately caught up in the idea of connecting with her neighbours, making them cookies and developing a relationship with the community.  Jeremy's immediate interests are in setting up his Christmas display and engaging the neighbourhood Home Owner's Association about his plans for his Christmas house.

The initial impression of of the HOA and the neighbourhood is uptight, privileged and very white.  Their brief investigation into the previous year's Christmas house leaves them uncomfortable with thousands of people invading their sleepy little neighbourhood.  They haul out their HOA rulebook which is hundreds of pages long, and start to point out where there could be problems.

There is no discussion. 

Morris literally starts harassing the HOA president, calling multiple times a day every day, and when she does ultimately answer he records their conversations.  Excerpts of these recordings are within the film.  Morris asserts repeatedly that he's not asking permission, that he's going to do his Christmas house (his ministry, he calls it), and notes, repeatedly, that he's a lawyer and that he will take them to court if the HOA try to get in his way.  His first contact with his new neighbours, before he's even moved into the neighbourhood, is to swing a stick.

The response from the HOA is handled in the form of a sarcastic letter, poorly written, with the term "undesirables" noted and  ending with the fact that not all neighbours celebrate Christmas and that some consideration should be given to them.  And with that, Morris has exactly what he was looking for, all the ammunition he needs to mount a war.  The HOA, from his standpoint, practices religious discrimination.

It escalates from there into a Morris-driven national media frenzy, online feeds of ultra-right-wingers who respond to triggers about infringing on "rights", to a militia group appearing on Morris' lawn citing that he needs personal protection from the ever-so-scary people of his white, middle-class, rural neighbourhood.  Morris pushes and pushes, and any push back just feeds into his persecution complex.  He is obsessively meticulous about recording conversations and videotaping encounters.  He trolls through the HOA bi-laws and documents every potential infraction that his neighbours perpetrate, like one neighbour having a "massive" (normal sized), "permanent" (easily moveable) structure "built" on their driveway (it's a hockey or perhaps soccer net) or the elderly woman who has three dogs instead of bi-law limit of two.  Are they in violation of the strictest interpretation of the rules of the HOA, sure.  Are they at all comparable to a massive, disruptive event that impacts the entire neighbourhood for over a week each year? Jeremy Morris would like you to believe it sure is.

It all heads to court in 2018 where a jury votes in Morris' favour.  Morris starts reciting what a vindication it is, that it proves he was correct in his behaviour and his conviction to do whatever the hell he wants, everyone else be damned.  He cites that "winning the lawsuit wasn't about money, what it was is it was about our principles. In America we love freedom, to go where we want, do what we want, say what we want, believe whatever we want...."  He trails off, talking about standing up for "values".  But the only value Morris has on display, the only principle he participates in is selfishness, at least as far as this whole endeavor goes.  He talks about how the display, his "ministry" is for the people, for charity, but it's clear it's only for himself.  Remember, it was Kristy who did the work to make it charitable.  His wife takes the kids away to her parents in that first year in West Hayden Estates, repulsed by the circus he's whipped up and refuses to let drop.  He blames the fight, the time lost with his family, on others when he is the chief instigator, and the one who offers no concession, only escalation. 

But within the year that ruling is overturned by a federal judge, citing a lot of things, but credibility of the two sides is a big factor.  Immediately Morris calls the judge "corrupt" and starts throwing around terms like "communism" and "banana republic".  Morris pushes it to the supreme court, even though losing could mean bankruptcy for his family.  He doesn't care.  Kristy, five years in, still laments the lack of connection she has with her neighbours, and seems to desperately want that connection, but her ties with her husband mean there is no chance at all of reconciliation.  Moving is only an option if and when Jeremy finds a spin where moving for him is a victory, rather than a defeat.  That's not said, but it is the implied response from this personality type.  

We see this with Trump, we saw it in Dr. Death...this inability to admit fault in a situation, the obsessive pursuit of one's own self-interest at not only the expense of the people around them, but society at large.  These type of people are damaging to society as a whole.  Their inability to see outside their own wants and desires, their manipulation of structures and systems, their twisting of people's own goodwill against them, allows them to get ahead at the expense of everyone else, and this is The American Way.  To "do what we want, to say what we want" is the only thing that matters, as long as they are the only ones to do and say what they want.

The final moments of the film is when it turns its most disingenuous, as it reveals from Jeremy's father that Morris' ultimate ambitions are to become a Governor or even President. "I think I'd be a great president," Morris father says, quoting his son's sentiment.  It insinuates that all of this drama was perhaps a master scheme he's orchestrated to raise his visibility, to solidify the right-wing voter base by trumpeting religious persecution, and to put as much attention on himself as possible.  It's a sudden turn that the filmmaker makes on Morris where, rather than letting him continue dig his own hole, it provides one of their own making beside him for him to jump in.  It's not to say that he's not using all of this as a platform for gathering attention for some form of campaign, but it's just a left-field topic to broach in the final moments which shift Morris from being an overbearing asshole of the highest order to some sort of mad supervillain (or, at the very least, political opportunist).

I vehemently dislike Jeremy Morris, or at least the Jeremy Morris presented in this film. We've seen too much of his type, the type completely unwilling to cooperate or compromise or work as a part of society.  This all could have been avoided with conversations held in good faith, but "good faith" for Morris is a weapon...his own "faith" he forges into bullets, and others' good faith is the gun he fires them with.  One of the HOA members talks about how Morris has completely destroyed her trust in others, how meeting new people puts her on edge.  The weariness of everyone around Jeremy Morris (Kristy Morris included) is palpable.  He seems like an exhausting person.  I know I'm certainly done with him.

The only one who seems eager to keep this fight going is Jeremy Morris.