What do secret societies, anarchists, and Christmas have in common? The answer: SantaCon. The global pub crawl during which adults dress up as Santa Claus and wander around the streets first started in San Francisco in 1994 and has since expanded all over the world.
There’s been a SantaCon on every continent, even Antarctica. Though the annual revelry is almost universally reviled, SantaCon’s origins are rooted in counterculture.
In 1974, anarchist members of the Danish art collective Solvognen started the first iteration of SantaCon. During Christmastime, about 30 men and women put on Santa costumes and staged protests throughout Copenhagen, raging against the “greed and capitalism that have corrupted Christmas.”
They gave impassioned speeches about economic inequality and handed out merchandise for free at department stores. Three years later, Bay Area resident Gary Warne saw an article in Mother Jones about Solvognen’s protest theater.
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Warne was a member of the “San Francisco Suicide Club,” a secret society that encouraged adventures and pranks throughout the city. He suggested that the club replicate the rampage of anti-establishment Santas in San Francisco, but the idea didn’t gain momentum.
The first SantaCon was organized in 1994 by Rob Schmitt, a member of the Cacophony Society, a less intense version of the Suicide Club. Schmitt didn’t know about Solvognen or Warne’s proposal, but he was inspired by a postcard to roam the streets of San Francisco in a group of people wearing Santa costumes. He gathered some friends and rented a bus, and the 38 Santas participated in a snowball fight, crashed corporate holiday parties, and stopped by the Lusty Lady, then the nation’s only unionized strip club. Using a body harness, one of the Santas (and Burning Man co-founder) John Law pretended to have hung himself in public. The event caught on, and the Cacophony Society’s Portland chapter organized its own SantaCon in 1996. All over the country, SantaCons started happening, and soon it was all over the world.
As SantaCon grew in size and influence, so did its notoriety. What started out as anti-capitalist hijinks became a global pub crawl, and in San Francisco, participants ranged from working-class folks to young urbanites. For local businesses, the reckless Santas emboldened by alcohol leave vomit, public urination, and chaos in their trail.
In 2014, a bank at Union Square was robbed by a man in Santa suit who used SantaCon as cover. Bars and restaurants brace themselves for the yearly rampage, tightening security and going as far as banning anyone dressed as St. Nick. The gathering regularly goes without proper permits from the city, and in 2018, the festivities ended with seven Santas cited for public drunkenness and 15 others in need of medical attention.
That same year, two inebriated participants trashed a Pakistani restaurant on Polk Street. In an interview with Harper’s Magazine, Schmitt distanced himself from the gathering and revealed that a few of the founders had thrown a funeral for the formerly counterculture event at one SantaCon.
In recent years, organizers have been trying to improve SantaCon’s reputation by shifting the focus away from drinking. On the event’s official website, guidelines such as “don’t get drunk in public,” “bring gifts,” and “Santa does not mess with security” are listed.
Tom DiBell, who also goes by Santa Tom and has helped organize SantaCon San Francisco for the past 10 years, stresses that the event isn’t about getting smashed. This year, he is also urging participants to stay home due to Covid-19. “Stay healthy and wear a mask,” he wrote when announcing the cancellation of the 2020 gathering.
There will be no SantaCon this year, which also means no excessive drinking in public and no Santas passed out on the sidewalk. Whether the rowdy behavior will return with the event in 2021 remains to be seen.
