Clearly, the 2006 holiday silly season has begun, and it is off to a rollicking start thanks to the Pagosa Springs (Colorado) Home Owners Association threatening to fine Lisa Jensen twenty-five dollars a day if she didn't remove a Christmas wreath that included the Peace Sign in the center.

When a group has power, as home owners associations do, there is an ethical obligation to properly investigate, research, and most of all think before using that power to interfere with the activities of others. A home owner decides to erect a 20 foot statue of Rudolph, complete with a megawatt blinking nose the size of a basketball and a 24 hour recording of Gene Autry singing about Rudolph's ride? Time to take action. Someone sets up a pulsating Christmas light display that causes anyone driving through the neighborhood to have a grand mal seizure? Go to it, Home Owners Association! A crèche featuring Hillary Clinton as Mary, Al Gore as Joseph and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as Archangels? Agreed: too political.

But some hypersensitive boobs complaining that Lisa Jensen's wreath was "political" and "divisive" isn't justification for charging in and acting like Christmas Nazis. Anyone who regards a symbolic wish for peace as "divisive" is either certifiably bats or Attila the Hun. What do they want, a statue in the front yard of Santa holding an AK-47? And political?

Are all the Christmas cards I've received saying "Peace on Earth" political statements? Are the lyrics of "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" a political chant? How could a peace sign in a Christmas wreath possibly be inappropriate, when seeking peace has been a central theme of Christmas for centuries?

It can't, of course. But the three board members (Larry, Moe and Curly, perhaps? No, that's unfair…to the Three Stooges. Bob Kearns, Jeff Heitz, and Tammy Spezze are the names of the culprits.) of the Pagosa Springs Home Owners Association blundered on anyway, setting off internet rants and attracting hundreds of phone calls of support for Jensen. If they really were unaware that Christmas is about peace as well as Tiny Tim, eggnog, Play Station 3 and too many replays of "A Christmas Story" on TV, they could have taken a couple of seconds and Googled "Christmas peace." Instead, they needed an edict from a higher Home Owners Association in Loma Linda to convince them that they had made a mistake. Only then did they withdraw their threat and apologize to Lisa Jensen.

The apology is nice, but the whole incident never should have happened at all. The Scoreboard is puzzled that joining the board of a Home Owners Association seems to turn so many people into Ethics Dunces, but since there is a lot of evidence that it does, anyone taking on such a role needs to be especially careful and take some precautions.. Learning what a holiday is about before interfering with someone's celebration of it would be a good place to start.