I've looked at a number of reports of this incident now, and in none of the time is the non-Christian comment attributed to the unnamed official, just that he said they might be "offensive to the community".

A five minute drive around any town in Britain right now will most likely chance upon a light display that would be offensive to any community of people with eyes.

Also, it would appear to be that the person who requested the take down was a representative of a Housing Association, not the local council. This would explain why the council hadn't heard of it.

A Housing Association, for those not familiar, is effectively a corporate landlord - they usually operate tower blocks and the like, or estates of flats. As they own the property, they do have every right to tell tenants what they can and can't hang up outside their houses.

Besides the fact that they are put up around Christmas time, whats religiously offensive about lights?

I don't think they have any religious meaning at all, and if it isn't offensive to non-Christians than who are these lights offending.

Now my ex-girlfriend lives in a complex with a pretty strict association. So I understand why the lights would be disallowed in order to keep the neighborhood looking uniform but I never thought they could offend anybody.

Our neighborhood has an association but they don't care about lights just fences, pools, sheds, and gardens.

Actually Hanukkah is known as the festival of lights, so I guess you could say it fits into Jewish territory. However I don't think they decorate with lights to celebrate. Just thinking on how they could be considered religious.

I'm offended when people put 20 of those inflatable snowmen/trees/whatever all over their yards. I should sue them over lack of taste.

I've heard so many stories like these - stop doing something or it might "offend" someone. I can understand if it was blatantly racist or something...but lights? Really???

*sigh*

Also, housing association people are nutty control freaks and they scare me.

Jewish people do celebrate with lights, but they generally keep it to a menorah, not the million candlepower extravaganzas normally associated with Christmas.

AMEN!

Ugh There are two neighbors in our neighborhood who have a competition every year to see how many of them they can fit in their yards at once, but they do it one by one for a couple of weeks. Some days I just feel like taking a knife and...

My sisters boyfriend has neighbors who put at least 15 inflatable snowmen in their front yard - it looks horrid and soooo tacky. Plus, they live in a upper-scale neighborhood and they have no kids.