‘You took Christmas joy’: Winnipeg Grinch steals six-foot Santa from popular display

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This article was published 04/12/2024 (311 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bah humbug.

That’s how a Winnipeg couple felt over the weekend after a sentimental life-sized Santa decoration was snatched from their Southdale neighbourhood front yard.

Sherrie Bredesen and her husband, Larry, arrived home Saturday evening from singing at a barbershop music performance and dinner with their self-made Santa still sitting on a swing in their Dayton Drive front yard.

But as Larry turned off the lights on their display around midnight, he noticed something strange.

The jolly old fellow was gone, grabbed from a display of lights, elves and reindeer.

“We could see the drag marks across our yard,” Sherrie said on Wednesday.

The trail ran to their street and went cold from there, with only Santa’s mitts and boots scattered in the yard.

“He’s gone, and we’re not happy, and the neighbours are not happy,” Sherrie said, adding that those neighbours had been checking their security cameras to see if they could find the Grinch. “It brought a lot of joy.”

Sherrie said people would drive by it often, and families with kids would come into their yard to see St. Nick.

The couple, in their 70s, built the Santa last year, using a pair of overalls that Larry’s late father used to wear when Larry was a child.

They used leaves as fill for the body, with their creation standing roughly six feet tall.

“It was lovingly made,” Sherrie said. “We really enjoyed making it.”

Santa would evolve as the holiday progressed, sitting with a bag of toys before Christmas, then with one leg up on the swing and a margarita in his hand after Christmas Day.

“It was sentimental,” Sherrie said. “My husband has a Norwegian background, so we called him Bjorn Bredesen, but he was Santa for the season.”

A Winnipeg police spokesperson said Wednesday decorations are nabbed yearly at Christmas and Halloween.

They don’t track them specifically, as they are lumped into theft statistics. They encourage anyone who has had a decoration stolen to file a police report.

The Bredesen’s have done that, hoping they can get it back if it turns up somewhere.

For now, a new prop sits where Santa once did — a sign with a message: “To the thief who stole our Santa, God saw you… and he’s not pleased. You took Christmas joy from our children!”

“I didn’t want to put anything bad,” Sherrie said. “But if that person comes back, I want them to see it. And I want the neighbourhood to know why Santa’s gone.”

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca