Pity the poor Old Manor pub in Potters Bar. In an attempt to bring some Christmas cheer to their Hertfordshire town, the owners hadn't foreseen the destructive power a giant inflatable Santa Claus can wield.
Sure, it lights up at night, and yeah, it can be seen by passing planes... but at what cost inflatable jollity?
Well, financially speaking the answer is £3,000 - not including the cost of repairing the roof - with the super-sized Saint Nick getting blasted so much by the wind that it's started making the building beneath it shake and rattle, creaking loudly and disturbing punters inside.
"When it is really windy it causes the whole pub to violently shake from side to side and makes a deafening creaking noise," said pub landlord Andrew Marler.
"The first time I heard it I got quite a shock it sounded like a wooden galleon rocking in a storm," added Marler. "It once created so much force that it actually ripped the mooring ropes out of the walls."
Now then, where we read that name "Andrew Marler" before? Could it be the same Andrew Marler that once wrote an article for The Independent about running a pub with the headline "My Biggest Mistake Ever"? It just might be, you know...
Still, things could be worse - at least the giant gift distributor isn't posing with a machine gun! Ho ho ho ho ho, indeed.