The stern letter arrived at the Levines’ home in Columbia’s River Hill village in early November.

The River Hill Community Association said the family had violated a covenant with “exterior lighting and poles.” Allison Levine, 13, caught enough of her parents’ conversation to understand that the elaborate Hanukkah lights display they’d been putting up for most of her life was the source of trouble.

“They ain’t shutting down my lights,” Allison thought to herself.

Hanukkah had been her favorite holiday since she was 2 and would return from preschool to wrap her little arms around a 6-foot inflatable Hanukkah bear that her grandmother bought for their front yard. In the years that followed, the Levines’ holiday decorations multiplied. They bought thousands of blue and white lights, plastic menorahs, inflatable dreidels and a Mensch on a Bench. Allison called the display a “Hanukkah winter wonderland.”

Allison asked her parents whether someone in the neighborhood was trying to cancel Hanukkah — and why?

It would be too simple to characterize the dispute over the Levines’ Hanukkah lights as a neighborhood squabble. Its roots, as told by the Howard County residents involved, suggest something deeper going on. Perhaps the tremors from the contentious Israel-Hamas war and presidential election rocked even the holiday decorations on a suburban Maryland home.

Allison’s parents, Matt and Susan Levine, moved to the house nearly 18 years ago, around the time anti-Semitic graffiti appeared in the neighborhood and Howard County authorities were searching for the culprit behind swastikas scorched into Ellicott City lawns.

Despite the disturbing vandalism, the family settled into the home on Empty Song Road and Matt Levine eventually joined the homeowners association board. The community guidelines, he would learn, did not require residents to submit an application for holiday decorations — provided they went up no more than 28 days before the holiday and came down within 28 days after.

As the years went on, the Levines’ collection of Hanukkah decorations grew exponentially. When Allison turned 9, she began making decisions about how to design the holiday lights display. She sweet-talked a new neighbor with a plate of cookies to secure permission to use their yard too. The multilawn collaboration even got a shoutout in a River Hill Community Association newsletter in 2020.

The violation notice from the association came just a few hours before the beginning of Shabbat — the Jewish faith’s sabbath from Friday’s sundown to Saturday’s — and imposed a deadline to respond by that Monday, a federal holiday.

A small fraction of the lights were up but none of the inflatables because community guidelines specified they weren’t allowed before Dec. 1. A curtain of lights had been dangling from the front of the house for weeks, but Matt Levine believed they complied with the rules because they were programmed to change according to the holiday.

After 11 years of transforming the two-story home into River Hill’s “Hanukkah House,” the notice had them baffled.

“The only thing that makes sense is someone is upset with Israel and taking it out with the lights,” Matt Levine concluded.

A year ago, the family incorporated a big Israeli flag into the display — a reflection of solidarity just months after the Oct. 7 attack when Hamas militants crossed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. Earlier in summer 2023, the family took a trip to Israel for Allison’s bat mitzvah, an experience that deepened their faith. The family invited visitors to their Hanukkah House in late 2023 to donate money for the Israel Defense Forces.

Then the police showed up, Matt Levine said. Someone called authorities just as they were staging a car parade for other Jewish families to drive by the house and view the lights. Most neighbors were friendly, but, as the war in Gaza heated up and public outcry against the civilian death toll heightened, Matt Levine recalled hearing some mutter about “supporting genocide” as they walked by.

In the year since the war began, Marylanders with ties to Israel and Gaza have struggled to find unity amid the conflict. The state has the eighth-largest Jewish population and the seventh-largest Muslim population among American states. The war and a rise in anti-Semitism were factors for some Jewish voters during the presidential election.

Ron Briggs lives across the street from the Levines. Athough he’s long thought the display was over the top, he said he has no issue with celebrating the Jewish holidays or even the Israeli flag display. But, around October, he noticed the curtain of lights hanging from his neighbor’s house had been programmed to read “MAGA ’24.”

“Really?” the 76-year-old said he thought. “It’s the Trump stuff that got us all lit up.”

Briggs and his wife moved from Baltimore to Columbia 27 years ago to get away from the noise and traffic, he said.

Over the years, he has ribbed Matt Levine about the lights as he walked to the mailbox.

“You don’t have enough,” Briggs joked. “You need more on the roof.”

Now some of the lights were going up months ahead of Hanukkah and the political statement bothered him. He suspected the MAGA sign’s size was larger than permitted by neighborhood guidelines. He complained to the homeowners association.

Matt Levine said he supported “none of the above” for president in the 2024 general election. He said he was playing around with the settings when the lights depicted the Trump slogan.

Weeks went by, and by the time the Levines began installing the Hanukkah display, Briggs had more objections. Living in River Hill had been nice and simple, he said.

“Then somebody comes in and wants to turn it into Disneyland,” Briggs said.

To the septuagenarian, the labyrinth of electrical cords blanketing the yard posed a safety issue. The decorations, he said, encroached on the sidewalk and hung too close to parked cars. And they are bright.

“He’s just going outside the bounds of what I would say is normal,” Briggs said. “This is a guy who puts a menorah on his car and drives around. He’s usually over the top with everything that he does.”

Briggs has taken issue with other things Matt Levine has done over the years, including installing security cameras, which he also reported to the community association. But he never discussed those concerns with him.

Briggs said he views his neighbor as a conservative, a proud rabble rouser and someone willing to “pull the Jewish card.”

To Matt Levine, Briggs and the homeowners association’s objections to the lights smack of anti-Semitism. He saw the violation notice as an intimidation tactic that he could not abide.

“I don’t think I needed an excuse to go bigger,” he said. “But I’ll take one.”

The Levines secured an extension to respond to the homeowners association notice. They have until Dec. 16 to hand over a rebuttal and don’t expect the issue to head to the board for consideration until after Hanukkah concludes and the lights come down.

In a statement, River Hill village manager Renee DuBois said the association “proudly celebrates the diverse cultures and heritages of its residents” and acknowledged the covenants permit holiday displays to be showcased for 28 days before and after the occasion.

“The Covenants uphold minimum standards for land use, architectural design, and property maintenance and safety for residents and visitors of the Village of River Hill,” she said. “Adhering to these standards ensures a safe and secure environment for everyone.”

On a Sunday afternoon in late November, the Levines began unboxing the lights for another Hanukkah season. Allison wasn’t sure why anyone would want to cancel her favorite holiday. Maybe they were just cranky, she said.

But the teen didn’t dwell on the disagreements of adults. Her mind was occupied with another problem — how to make the lights dance.