How long is too long to leave up holiday decorations? What Americans really think about those St. Patrick’s skeletons.

Bree Linville; skodonnell/ dimdimich/ wragg/ 4x6/ Jaroon/ Leonello/ Getty Images

Not everyone is taking down their décor because they want to.

Skelly the Skeleton was such a huge hit last Halloween that some consumers kept the 12-foot-tall fixture on display throughout winter holidays, donning a turkey leg for Thanksgiving, a Santa suit for Christmas and a leprechaun outfit for St. Patrick’s Day.

But some neighbors and neighborhood associations are grinching out on homeowners who leave holiday décor on display, perhaps a little longer than usual. Such crackdowns range from polite suggestion from a neighbor, to a letter from the homeowners association, to HOA fines, to legal action.

So when is the right time to take down your décor?

If you want to go with what most Americans do, the vast majority of U.S. adults took down their winter seasonal décor last year within a week of the holiday, according to exclusive polling from a Grid/Harris Poll. Respondents were also more likely to take down their outdoor décor sooner than they are their indoor décor.

But if you’re holding tight to your holiday displays, you’re not exactly alone: Roughly 1 in 20 people kept their trees trimmed after that week mark — some pushing past a month — according to the poll.

What finally pushes homeowners to get the ladder out and pack the boxes back up?

About half of those who responded to the survey cited tradition as the reason they took down their decorations — saying there’s a set date every year to un-trim the trees.

Other top reasons given include: The displays were no longer appropriate, needed to be removed to make room for other seasonal décor, and because they were simply tired of looking at them.

But whenever they do it, not everyone is taking down their décor because it was their idea.

About 1 in 10 said they took theirs down because someone, like a neighbor or family member, requested they do so.

As a side note, it turns out Americans are just as worried about taking their décor down too soon as they are about being too late with slightly more than half of people polled not wanting to be the first ones to take down their displays.

A 2022 survey from OnePoll/Canvaspop found neighbors can be judgmental about other neighbors leaving holiday décor up too long. Three-quarters said their neighbors should pack up their winter holiday displays before the end of January. No research has been done yet on whether those are the same neighbors that yell, “Get off my lawn.”

And then there are the HOAs and neighborhood rules

Sometimes, it’s not about playing nice with the Joneses and more about actual décor rules a neighborhood has. Depending on where you live, your décor may be subject to covenants, conditions or restrictions — and you might be subject to fines.

A homeowners association can, for instance, regulate everything from what color lights you can put up to whether you can have inflatable lawn decorations to how many days after a holiday your displays need to come down.

And many, if not most, of the 380,000 community associations, covering more than 70 million people, have rules about holiday decorations, according to the Community Associations Institute — including the type of décor, amount of décor and, yes, the timing.

Mandates for taking down holiday displays

About 9 percent of survey respondents said they took down their displays because their neighborhood required it — such as through the homeowners association guidelines.

The decoration police can also come in the form of the actual law. Four percent of those surveyed said they took the displays down because they said it was required by their local law.

Many cities and counties have local ordinances regulating lights, noise, traffic and parking, all of which can be related to holiday displays (think neighborhood-spectacle-level displays) — and may even have specific regulations for holiday displays.

San Diego’s municipal code, for instance, regulates temporary outdoor lighting, with exceptions for seasonal holiday lighting, so long as the display isn’t up for more than 60 days in a row or 120 days total in a year.

Violating these could not only irk your neighbors but put you at risk of getting sued by them or your local government.

So, how popular are such mandates? Respondents were divided on whether laws should mandate that people should take down their outdoor décor by a given deadline, with about half, at 51 percent, being opposed.

On the other hand, people were a little more comfortable with the idea of the mandate coming from closer to home, with just 2 in 5 being opposed to residential guidelines requiring residents to take down their outdoor décor by a certain date.

Some are so tied to their home décor (or maybe finding their inner rebel) that they’ve gone to great lengths, such as dressing up their oversized Halloween skeleton (fondly known as Indiana Bones) and moving it from yard to yard, like one Florida household did to avoid fines.

While these fines can range, another Florida household who put up their holiday lights too early received a letter from their homeowners association that said they’d be subject to fines of $100 a day, up to $1,000, unless they corrected their violation of a rule that said they couldn’t put up lights until after Thanksgiving.

But if you’re not willing to find the HOA loopholes, it may be worth checking how long your 12-foot pal, your inflatable snowman or your sparkly life-size reindeer will be welcome to the neighborhood — and if you have a storage plan in place.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

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How long is too long to leave up holiday decorations? What Americans really think about those St. Patrick’s skeletons.