Laurie Goyette has a very special wish for the holiday season: She wants her Santa Claus back.

Some Grinch — or maybe a group of Grinches — made off with her life-sized wooden Saint Nick figure from the front lawn of her central Mountain house last week.

And it's not something she can readily replace. The kidnapped Kringle — which was attached by screws to a big pine tree as the centrepiece of a Yuletide display of lights and ornaments — has been part of her family's Christmas tradition for all of her 59 years.

"When I came home Sunday from visiting our cottage, I didn't notice right away. We have a bunch of cats, so I was concerned about getting them into the house.

"But then my husband (Sam) came in a few minutes later and said, 'Santa is gone.' I couldn't believe it. That was my Santa."

The part that really hurts, she says, is "the Santa was a celebration of me, not just Christmas."

"My parents had been trying to have a baby for seven years. So it was a big deal when I was born."

Shortly after her birth on Dec. 14, 1959, her dad assembled the Santa from a kit he bought at a store.

"It was paper kit that he glued onto a piece of plywood. Then he cut out the wood around the figure, Santa's moustache was a separate piece that was screwed on and there was a bag that was attached behind him," she said.

After finishing the task, he placed the Santa on the front yard of their house on Kimberly Drive in Rosedale to proudly celebrate his first Christmas as a parent. The tradition was repeated each year until Laurie had children and Santa was passed on to her.

"And now both my parents have passed. My mom died in August 2007 and my dad in 2010. It's very sentimental to me."

She says she can't understand why someone would go to the trouble of stealing her Santa, which had been repainted and touched up numerous times over the years.

"It has no value to anyone else," she says. "It's big and it's heavy. It's not just some little thing that someone can carry off. Someone must have been pretty determined to take it."

Goyette reported the theft from her home on Meadowlark Drive to Hamilton police and took the story onto social media. A Facebook post she made had been shared more than 670 times as of Tuesday afternoon.

"It's really important to me to get it back. I want to someday see it passed on to my grandchildren."

mmcneil@thespec.com

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