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Responding to two anonymous complaints, officials in Ohio's Sycamore
Township said on Tuesday they have ordered Jasen Dixon to take down
his display by Friday because it violates local property maintenance
codes.
Dixon, who manages a haunted attraction in Indiana, faces a $1,000
fine if he does not remove the 10-foot by 10-foot structure he built
three weeks ago.
He said he made the models for the zombie Mary and three wise men
and borrowed props to make the Joseph and Jesus zombie figures. The
baby Jesus is pale with totally white eyes, while the other
life-sized figures are partly skeletal.
Dixon said many people approve of the display, which is lit by red
and green lights. A Facebook page he made for it has attracted 200
"likes." He said that at around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, he discovered
three women in his front yard taking selfies with the display in the
pouring rain.
“I never suspected it to be this big,” Dixon said.
Greg Bickford, the township administrator, said the citation has
nothing to do with the content of the display, which he called
"comical." Rather, the size and location are the issues, Bickford
said.
“We’re complaint-driven,” Bickford said, when asked if other
displays had been cited this season. “If we were to drive up and
down every single street and try to find violations, we’d never get
off a street.”
Dixon, who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years and never
received any other citations, was also cited for junk and debris on
his property that he said was never an issue before. He said he is
still considering what to do with the manger scene by the township’s
Friday deadline, the day after Christmas.
“I haven’t decided," he said. "I don’t really know what’s going to
happen.”
(Reporting by Steve Bittenbender in Louisville, Kentucky; Editing by
Mary Wisniewski and Will Dunham)
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