Every year, homeowners across the region make their Christmas light displays bigger and better. This year, one Northern Virginia family is getting national recognition for their display. In December, an Ashburn home will appear on ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight.
The episode featuring Mike and Johanna Horn, their family, and their over-the-top holiday display (located at 21260 Rosetta Pl., Ashburn) will air on Thursday, December 11 from 10 to 11 p.m. The episode — titled “Holiday Igloomination” — will show the Horn family competing against the Martin and Vistalli families for a chance to win a $50,000 grand prize and Light Fight trophy.
“I sent them our house on a whim. It was more just to see if I could get on there. I never thought I would actually get selected,” says Mike Horn. “It’s one of those things where it was really cool to even be recognized like that. That was good enough for me.”
The Horns have been decorating their home for Christmas since 2016. To prepare for the show — which tapes a year before it airs — Horn started putting up decorations on October 1. “There is testing throughout the whole process, and once everything is tested and set up, I usually start tweaking to make sure everything is as perfect as I can get it,” he said.
It was an all-hands-on-deck effort once the camera crew came to Ashburn for the three-day shoot.
“We had a lot of the neighborhood involved with helping coordinate different activities throughout the shoot,” Horn said. “We had something around 50 neighbors and friends film the reveal with us, and it just ended up working out really well.”
The Horns’ home also appeared in Northern Virginia Magazine’s annual list of the houses with the Best Christmas decorations in 2024 and 2025.
When I visited the home last year, it was like no other display I’d ever seen before. As you round the bend on Rosetta Place, you’ll immediately spot the bright, dancing lights. The home is covered with 90,000 pixel lights, including holiday figures like snowmen, nutcrackers, and candy canes. And it’s all synchronized to Christmas songs.
“We have countless people stop by and tell us how important it is to them, how they come every year, how it’s touched them, and how it’s made them feel so Christmas-y,” says Horn. “Just to step back and hear people talk about it in that way, it’s very reassuring and it makes me want to keep doing it.”
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Stop by the display before December 30 to see it for yourself.
This story was originally published on November 7, 2025.
Feature image by Michele Kettner
