Even before Alexis Luttrell adorned her Memphis-area front yard with a pair of skeletons for Halloween, she had decided that she would keep them up for a while. They would just need some seasonal wardrobe changes.
Ahead of Election Day in early November, for example, the two skeletons — an 8-foot man and his supersize dog — supported Kamala Harris’s presidential bid with campaign flags. A few weeks later, Ms. Luttrell shifted toward Christmas by outfitting the man in a red-and-green tutu and by supplying the dog with a hat shaped like a Christmas tree.
A leash that doubled as garland presumably prevented the dog from getting loose in Ms. Luttrell’s quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in Germantown, Tenn., just outside Memphis.
In early December, however, Ms. Luttrell received a warning from a Germantown compliance officer that cited a city ordinance limiting how long holiday and seasonal decorations can be displayed. The skeletons, in other words, had to come down since the city considered them Halloween decorations.
The warning was followed by a citation — and a February court date to boot.
“I just thought this would be something fun,” said Ms. Luttrell, who has refused to remove the skeletons from her yard and plans to dress them up for future holidays. “I’m just trying to live within the day to day of keeping your yard up and make sure you’re not doing anything wrong. But for some reason, it’s been determined that dressing up a skeleton and a skeleton’s dog is not OK.”
Ms. Luttrell’s private dispute grew into a public spectacle this week when WREG, the CBS affiliate in Memphis, ran a story about it. In the wake of that report, Ms. Luttrell, who will turn 48 on Sunday, said she had received an outpouring of support on social media, including messages from several other Germantown residents who wrote that they, too, had been cited for their skeleton decorations.
“Why are they spending their time hunting down people who have decorations in their yards?” Ms. Luttrell asked of city officials in a telephone interview. “We have other things that we can deal with — even things that are code-enforcement-related — and this is what you choose?”
The city found Ms. Luttrell in violation of an ordinance that calls for decorations to be installed within 45 days of the holiday for which they are intended and to be removed within 30 days afterward. The ordinance has been in place since 2005, said Cameron Ross, the director of the Economic and Community Development Department.
“The resident has displayed Halloween skeletons in her front yard since October,” Mr. Ross said in an email. “She will have to appear in court, however she can put the skeletons away until next September (45 days before Halloween) and only be responsible for court costs rather than any potential fines,” he added.
Any penalties would be determined by the city prosecutor and judge after the initial hearing, Mr. Ross said. Of the nine citations that were issued for similar displays during the first week of December, eight were resolved once the residents took down their skeletons, he said. Only Ms. Luttrell has refused to comply.
“Well,” she said, “it looks like court.”
Ms. Luttrell, who has a law degree, works in health care compliance for a pharmaceutical company. She said she had already been contacted by several lawyers who were interested in taking up her case.
“I’m going to fight this,” she said.
Ms. Luttrell does not think she has run afoul of the ordinance, she said, because the skeletons are Christmas-themed and the holiday window outlined by the city has not expired.
Besides, she asked, who gets to define what holiday decorations look like?
Ms. Luttrell did not anticipate any trouble when, in early October, she purchased the dog skeleton from Home Depot and his owner from Joann Fabric and Crafts. She felt lucky to have found them since the large skeletons tend to sell out.
Ms. Luttrell put the skeletons up in her yard with the help of her sister, Christina Luttrell, and her daughter, Jeanne Tutor, whom Ms. Luttrell described as a Halloween fanatic. The holiday passed without incident. It was only when Ms. Luttrell incorporated the skeletons into her Christmas display — they were joined by an inflatable Santa and Christmas tree — that the city took notice.
While a recent windstorm wrought havoc on her inflatable Santa — “He was found two doors down,” Ms. Luttrell said — her skeletons are still in the front yard, and she has big plans for them in the weeks and months to come. She hopes to deck them out for St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and Pride month, in June.
City officials will not stray from her thoughts.
“I can’t wait for them to see my ‘Love is Love’ theme for Valentine’s,” she said.
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