Last I checked, no city asks for permission before putting up their Christmas decorations down main street, either. This was on city property, with permission, and there’s no indication that anyone was intending to bother people. (Unlike, say, parking in front of someone’s house, which doesn’t always but at least can have such implications.)
Furthermore, the candles have zero religious imagery, and thus are only secularly connected with Christmas. And while I can have sympathy for people who have religious problems with Christmas, and for people who don’t like the commercialism, I cannot have sympathy for people who have a problem with the national winter holiday season. That level of dislike is just pure old humbuggery.
People these days seem to think that they not only have a right to be offended, but that said offense is enough for them to control. That’s not how it works. If these people want to say that the candles are bad, they need to articulate what harm is being done by them. They need to show that their offense has merit. Otherwise anyone can control anyone, as being offended is really, really easy to do. A sterile world where everyone is walking on eggshells is not good.
And I say this as someone who is all for political correctness: but the point of that is that you are making meaningless concessions for you, but meaningful concessions for others. This is pretty much the exact opposite. A single objector decided he got to make everyone else unhappy. He was unwilling to take the meaningless concession of allowing nondescript candles in order to allow others to be happy.
If anything, the fact that the house was Jewish should have been all the more reason for leaving things alone. There is nothing in the Torah about letting other people celebrate holidays you personally don’t like, but there’s a lot about hospitality being the most important thing ever (to the point that God will personally destroy cities who don’t practice it).