There is one day a year when, anywhere in New York City, without rhyme or reason, your subway car could be boarded by one or 100 inebriated Santas. This year’s SantaCon happened this past Saturday, much to the ongoing dismay of all New Yorkers.
On a small makeshift stage at 40th and Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, Head Santa and his crew of budget miscreants led the crowd of several thousand through breathing exercises to prep for the day’s outing. “Take a deep breath in. And out. Say it with me: I am Santa.” The audience — an eclectic mix of Santas, Grinches, Reindeer and Gingerbread Men — took a collective inhale and repeated the affirmation. “You are a present, and you should be present in the moment,” Head Santa told them. “You’re more than just a ho! Raise your fists, say ‘ho, ho, ho!’” At this moment, it is not yet 11 a.m. A woman next to me pulls out a mini bottle of rosé and takes a swig. Around us, Santas raise their fists and chant. One Santa tears open her shirt to reveal a Santa hat bra. “As we spread Christmas cheer…and maybe cold soars.”
The crowd is still too sober to be truly rowdy, but the future is visible in the number of mini liquor bottles being downed next to NYPD officers. Santa’s only reindeer is rolled out onto the stage: a deer made out of a shopping cart, with wide eyes and a duct tape harness, named Bondage Bambi. “We are here to ho for charity,” Santa reminds his brethren, shaking the shopping cart as if it would take flight at any moment. Inhale. Exhale. “Everything you give is going to charity, so remember to party motherfuckers!”
For those lucky enough to not know what this is, here’s the quick version: Originally called Santarchy, SantaCon began in San Francisco in 1994 as a surrealist festival inspired by a Danish activist theatre group that staged an anti-corporate protest in Copenhagen in 1974. Santarchy pointed out and satirized Christmas consumerism — a theater kid’s take on “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” By 2024 (let’s be honest, 2004), the NYC event — there are now hundreds of SantaCons in more than 40 countries — has devolved into an excuse to day drink, piss in the streets and punch people dressed as Santa Claus. New Yorkers know it best as “the day I stay inside” and, alternatively, “straight pride.”
It’s also, in theory, a fundraiser. The organizers of New York’s event market it as a “charitable, non-political, nonsensical Santa Claus convention that happens once a year to fund art & spread absurdist joy.” Leading up to this year’s city-wide bar crawl, SantaCon attendees were reminded of the charity angle via the website, the app they’ve been told to download, and at the in-person gathering in Midtown by anyone with a microphone. It is easily the least-known fact about SantaCon. Even by participants. Once the parade through Times Square begins, charitable ambitions are, let’s say, deprioritized.
Outside of the convention’s first ticket-holders-only venue, Circo Times Square, Santas flowed from the parade into a line outside the club, where, at 11:30 am, shots and tall boys in paper bags went from not unseen to abundant. One group composed of siblings and cousins in their 20s came to SantaCon as a bonding experience for the “whole family” to spread “holiday cheer.” They only became aware that the festival was for charity when buying their tickets. “I mean, good cause and get drunk, right?” one member of the group told me. I received similarly enthusiastic responses when I brought up the charitable element of the festival, however, no Santa seemed to know, or care, what it was they were raising money for.
This is true for attendees of all ages. Bruce Springsteen Santa and his friend Buddy The Elf told me that this was their first con and that they had come out for the “vibes.” Bruce Santa had an electric guitar on him which he planned to bring in the club. He air-guitared to the music coming from the boombox around Buddy’s neck. Bruce Santa was a young man under 30, while Buddy was older. Behind them, an even older couple and their two adult children left the parade to seek out bars on their own. Circo may not be family-friendly, but Dad was dressed as Santa and there are more than 50 other bars to crawl through.
A percentage of ticket sales go to several NYC-based and global charities like City Harvest, Materials for the Arts and the Burning Man Project, which is technically a nonprofit. However, regardless of what SantaCon considers to be charity, not much of its profits actually go towards those groups. In 2023, an investigation by Gothamist found that “the organization raised $1.4 million through SantaCon programming from late 2014 through the end of 2022, and that less than a fifth of that money has gone to registered nonprofits.” In 2018, it also lost $17,498 of investments in cryptocurrencies or “equal to about a third of its charitable giving that year.”
Gothamist, and a host of other publications, were surprised to find that much of SantaCon’s profits went to Burning Man and crypto, but the festival has been taking a page from Burning Man’s book for a while, a festival that also began “anti-capitalist.” Like at Burning Man, your name is not your name at SantaCon. It’s part of the Santa Code: “Santa is Santa! You are Santa. Santa is Santa. Santa addresses all other Santacon participants as…SANTA!” This is a festival where you don’t want to be well, you. Santa says to shed yourself for 12 hours and be someone else, free from individual responsibility. If you took a walk through the East Village on Saturday, chances are you saw rouge groups in red greet each other by name across the street.
The MTA may have banned drinking on commuter services this year, but Santa always finds a way. When Head Santa asked the crowd Saturday morning “Who here is in New York City?” only half cheered. It turns out if you give a Santa a Coors Light, he’ll forget what city he’s in. “Who’s ready to party?” on the other hand, received thunderous applause. At 11:40 am, I stood behind two women who could not figure out if they were heading uptown or downtown. “I don’t know, I’m too tipsy,” one finally admitted, picking a direction and starting to walk.
SantaCon Santas are notoriously uncharitable to the city. At multiple points in their marketing and on stage at the beginning of the day, festival organizers remind Santas to follow the six F’s of SantaCon: “Don’t fuck with kids, don’t fuck with cops, don’t fuck with bar staff, don’t fuck up yourself, don’t fuck with NYC, don’t fuck with Santa’s charity mission.” This gives you an idea of some of the issues caused by the Santas over the years. If you opened any social media platform in New York City on Saturday, you’d be given tips on how to avoid SantaCon’s route, and, alternatively, horror stories from encounters with Santa. Some people have childhood trauma from sitting on Santa Claus’ lap, others gain it later when Santa hurls on their shoes in broad daylight.
Several hours later, on a 7 train heading downtown, a dozen visibly tipsy Santas boarded my train car with beers in hand. One in his early twenties appeared to be trying to read the subway map. “I have to be at dinner in four hours and I’m not sober enough to get there,” he said to another Santa. At 33rd St, one Santa abruptly stood up, yelling “Santas! Get off!” They obeyed, stumbling off to the relief of the car. One straggler stopped to look at me, eyeing the reindeer ears sticking out of my bag, holding the door as if to say “Coming, comrade?” before he too stumbled away.
As the day came to a close, with a full night still to go for Santa, I wandered through the East Village where Santas were busy spreading holiday joy and nonsensical behavior in equal measure. Some were stuffed to the brim inside sticky Irish pubs and dive bars, some congregated in groups on the sidewalk shouting for “Mrs. Claus,” and others stumbled on alone. Outside of another festival ticket-only club, one Santa was being written up by an NYPD officer for an open container violation while just a few blocks away, four women in their 60s dressed as reindeer drunkenly pulled a stranger’s dog out of its stroller to take selfies with it. It may not be the charity mission that New York City wants or deserves, but Santa won’t remember that.
