Imagine decorating for Christmas. When do you put your Christmas decorations up? I used to decorate the day after Thanksgiving, but when Covid happened, I decided I needed the festivities to start sooner, so I decorated the day after Halloween instead. My Christmas decorations now go up sometime in November, not always November first, but almost always well before Thanksgiving. I’d be really upset if someone told me I couldn’t decorate that early.

In this story, one homeowner was really upset when her HOA set a rule that you can only put up decorations 15 days before and after a holiday. That would mean you couldn’t decorate for Christmas until like a week or two after Thanksgiving! I’d be furious!

This neighbor was furious, not just about Christmas but also about Halloween since she likes to decorate for Halloween on October 1st.

Instead of just getting mad about it, she decided to get even and take advantage of the new rules. Let’s read all about it.

HOA passed a stupid decorating rule.

Our board was tired of seeing people leave decorations up too long after holidays ended so they passed a rule last July that we could only have decorations up 15 days prior and must be taken down 15 days after a holiday.

Some people might think that rule is ok. But I like to decorate for halloween on October 1st to have the decorations up all of October. I don’t think that is unreasonable.

And I liked having Christmas up (it was a tradition) on the weekend after Thanksgiving. Everyone is out for the holiday. We make a big deal of it.

And we’d take Halloween down the weekend after Halloween and Christmas came down the weekend after New Years. It isn’t up all year.

OP got mad and then got even.

When they passed this rule, I was livid.

I decided that they never mentioned which holidays we could decorate for so the first thing I did was go out and buy Red, White and Blue lights. I decorated for the 4th of July and you better believe I left those annoying lights up until July 19th.

Problem is there really aren’t major holidays from July on until October. BUT the HOA did not say it had to be a major holiday.

Time to celebrate some major and minor holidays.

After July 19th, I decorated for International Beer day which was on August 4th.

How do you decorate for that? Well it was the same Red, White and Blue lights up for the 4th of July but I removed the sign that said “Happy Independence Day” and replaced it with a sign I made myself that read “Happy International Beer Day”.

On August 19th I changed the sign to Happy National Aviation Day. I kept the same lights up though.

Next was Labor Day. Yep. Just changed the sign again.

The fun continued…

On September 19th I started celebrating Rosh Hashanah. Because again, they never indicated which holidays we could decorate for.

I removed the Happy Rosh Hashanah on October 1st and changed it to Happy Sukkot. But I went all out for that. I created a Booth out of my halloween casket decorations and put little figures (taken from my halloween decorations) into them.

I kept his up over the holidays where I started with Veterans day after halloween and then went to Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

The board wants to change the rules again.

They board met March 8th, and they tried to pass a rule saying which holidays we could decorate for, BUT they couldn’t get the vote when they tried to just include, New Years, Valentines, 4th of July, Halloween and Christmas.

They didn’t include any Jewish Holidays and our Jewish neighbors didn’t like that.

They didn’t include any non-christian holidays like Ramadan and a lot of people voiced their displeasure with that.

So they are going to meet again on April 10th and I think they are just going to change the rule to make decorations come down for the holidays in a reasonable time and not put restrictions on when we can start.

I like OP’s style! Decorating all year long for every holiday you can imagine sounds like a good plan!

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a family living outside the HOA who refuse to remove their tree or lights despite their neighbors hating them.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person likes how she handled the situation.

Another person thinks she did a good job dealing with the HOA.

I don’t know the answer to this question. I wouldn’t want to live in an HOA.

Wow! A turquoise house!

If the HOA is going to make a ridiculously annoying rule, the best way to handle it is to follow the rule in the most annoying way possible like the homeowner in this story. I’d love it if some of the other neighbors joined in and started celebrating other minor holidays. I’m sure there’s some sort of holiday every day of the year, even if it’s just national whatever day.

I definitely think that the 4th of July is a legitimately reason to decorate. Why not put up red, white and blue lights? Sounds good to me! It doesn’t just have to be flags and fireworks.

I wonder how long it will take for the HOA to actually reach a decision about a modification to the rule. Hopefully they realize that it would be better not to have the rule at all.