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I don’t know what you feel about the issue, but this man clearly had strong emotions:

Man attacks inflatable ghosts, pumpkin

Fri Oct 12, 10:16 PM ET

A woman says a neighbor attacked her inflatable Halloween lawn display of three ghosts and a giant pumpkin, then apparently smashed his head through her window in a fit of rage.

State Police said officers found a drunken John Odee, 43, inside Dawn Garcia’s house in the Hudson Valley town of Lloyd on Thursday night, arrested him after a brief struggle and charged him with burglary.

Garcia told the Middletown Times Herald-Record she heard hollering and swearing and looked outside to see Odee struggling with the giant pumpkin. “He was enraged. I could see that,” she said.

When she yelled at him to go away, Odee charged the house. She fled through the back door with three of her children and heard window glass breaking. She called 911 from another neighbor’s house. Police said Odee used his head to smash a window to get in.

“What made him do that, I don’t know,” Garcia said. “We had the same decoration up last year and it didn’t bother him.”

Odee was being held at Ulster County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail Friday night. A corrections officer said inmates could not come to the phone. The officer did not know if Odee had an attorney.

Lloyd is about 90 miles north of New York City.

I understand that during the Winter Holiday season (PC Alert!) people tend to go overboard. There is almost an expectation of tackiness and a reward for the person with the most lavish of tackiness.

Neighborhoods get together and decide they will all spend huge sums on decorations and on electricity just so that others can drive by and say “oh my gosh.” It is a small reward for so much work, but I have a basic understanding of the logic behind it.

But what is with the new trend to decorate lawns with huge inflatable decorations for any holiday? Is there anyone out there who has thought to themselves, “I just can’t get into the holiday spirit. If only I would see a huge inflatable figure in my neighbor’s lawn, then I would be in the right frame of mind.”

I would say that this is clearly a case of the tyranny of the few on the many. This is a phenomenon of a free society. I would ask my readers in other societies, especially ones with less freedoms that in the US of A, if they have this type of problem. Is bad taste tolerated? Is demonstrative activity like this tolerated with the shake of a head, or is it dealt with (as the man in the story clearly tried to do)?

I doubt there are giant blow-up figures of Chairman Mao in people’s lawns in China on their holidays. Yet we get huge depictions of Uncle Sam.

Do Hindus or Muslims allow huge blow-up figures of religious items on their neighbors’ lawns as we do in both Christian and Jewish themes?

I would ask my psychiatricly trained readers to explain to me what is the inner struggle of someone who would put a giant turkey on their lawn. Are the people who mix religious and cultural metaphors struggling inside? Is Santa and Nascar on your lawn a sign of a personality disorder, or just of low IQ?

Finally, I would call on any epidemiologists out there to start a study of the use of such ornaments and the possible correlation with an insect-bourne encephalitis. It may be the only logical explanation.

So here is to you, Mr. Odee. Yes, you were a drunken idiot when you did it, but you lived out the fantasy of many of us. Yes, you stuck your head through glass and you are going to pay a large fine, but you will forever stand as an icon to those of us who are far less mystified than the Garcia family as to the true rancor these objects cause.

Perhaps one day we will all inflate a giant figure of Mr. Odee in our lawns to commemorate this day.