Bensalem, PA Sign Regulations: Holiday Displays (2026)

Festoon lighting, strings of decorative lights draped or looped between poles or building points, sits inside Bensalem's general sign regulations rather than a stand-alone holiday ordinance. Section 232-715(d) lists festoon lighting among the illumination types the Township allows, alongside external and internally halo-lit signage, but subsection (d)(3) narrows the allowance to a specific season: festoon lighting is permitted during national and religious holidays, and such lighting shall be removed within one week of the holiday. That one-week teardown clock runs regardless of which holiday triggered the display, so a property that strings lights for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other national or religious observance must take them down within seven days after that holiday passes.

Section 232-716, the chapter's prohibited-signs list, backs up the seasonal rule at (22) by naming festoon lighting, except as permitted in Section 232-715, as an unlawful sign, which means festoon lighting displayed outside a holiday window, or left up past the one-week removal deadline, is treated the same as any other banned sign under the chapter. Section 232-716(8) separately carves out an exception for holiday or decorative lighting or displays from the broader ban on flashing, blinking, or animated signs, so a static or gently sequenced holiday light display is not swept into that flashing-sign prohibition the way a commercial digital sign would be.

The rules apply Townshipwide and are not limited to residential properties; a business decorating its storefront for the holidays is bound by the same one-week removal deadline as a homeowner.