The masked vandals arrived at 2:10 a.m. and worked quickly. Within one minute, Rudolph was dead.

So too was Frosty, the Abominable Snowman and the gingerbread man. And Santa, the very symbol of Christmas himself, had fallen.

Inside his house in Scarborough’s Guildwood neighbourhood, Scot Patriquin watched the TV series “Lost” with his son. Their binge had taken them deep into the night; the show, after all, had just gotten good. Then they heard bangs from out on the lawn.

“Dad!” his son screamed. “They’re popping the inflatables!”

Patriquin’s bright, bombastic Christmas display had been the envy of his neighbours for eight years and within 60 seconds in the early hours of Dec. 7, it was destroyed. Every last inflatable on Patriquin’s lawn — all 12 of them, including the nativity scene,

See Full Page