His cheeks are still red and his smile is still there, but Norbert Hoppe's life-sized Santa decoration looks painfully sad with his neck and limbs broken, and embarrassingly cold without his custom-made red suit.

For nine years, Hoppe has gone all-out to decorate his Peachtree City home "for the children in the neighborhood," he says. Last Sunday night, vandals ripped his display apart, dumping Santa in the wet street and tearing the antlers off the reindeer.

Hoppe was "so sad, so disappointed, so angry," says his wife, Sally. The 79-year-old Chicago native has become well known for the elaborate outdoor displays. He works on them "every year starting in about January or February," Hoppe said.

The owner of a candle factory in Chicago, Hoppe says he wanted to move here as soon as he saw Peachtree City on a driving tour with his nephew who lives in Roswell.

"I couldn't do this in Chicago," he says. "But this has become something that the children look forward to. Last year when I was putting up a Santa in a sleigh, a little girl asked if she could come and sit in the seat. So we took pictures of her in the sleigh, and that was a big deal for her. It's disheartening that someone would want to spoil it. I hope they think about it and feel sorry for what they did."

At least 200 people visited the site this year, he said, "stopping, taking pictures, just enjoying it."

"And just like that, all my work was in pieces," he said.

The Hoppes say they feel as if Peachtree City is home, though their son lives in New Orleans. Another son, Air Force First Lt. James Hoppe, disappeared while piloting a mission in South America in 1970 and has not been heard from since.

Hoppe says he learned his woodworking skills from his carpenter father, pointing out several pieces of furniture he made, including an elaborate sewing cabinet. He styles the faces of his figures from plaster of Paris, using rubber molds from clay sculptures. Other display figures he cuts from three-quarter-inch plywood, and paints with faces, clothing or whatever's appropriate. This year some cartoon figures and stylized penguins clustered around an ice-skating rink.

The vandalism was reported to Peachtree City police, who so far have no leads.

Hoppe says he has not lost his enthusiasm for decorating for Christmas 1999.