Hold onto your reindeers, boys and girls. SantaCon is coming to town.
You've probably seen murmurs about SantaCon on the Internet this week. If you're not familiar with the annual event, think of it like a gathering of Santa Claus cosplayers if all of them dressed and behaved like Billy Bob Thornton's character in Bad Santa.
Hopefully that description conjured up some images in your head of what SantaCon is all about. It's basically a big bar-hopping day where New Yorkers dress up in Santa Claus suits and other festive apparel. Other cities host their own version of this event, too. They descend upon their neighborhood bars spreading holiday cheer in their daylong drunken bender. The organizers describe SantaCon on the event's official website as "a charitable, non-commercial, non-political, nonsensical Santa Claus convention that happens once a year for absolutely no reason." And it is all going down this year on Dec. 13.
So you might be able to guess why SantaCon is the bane of many New Yorkers' existence. A part from those who revel in SantaCon's bacchanalia, the event has been nothing but a nuisance for many New Yorkers. In the past, Community Boards have banned it from their neighborhoods and residents have complained about the participants' rowdy behavior and the gifts these Santas bring with them, a.k.a. vomit on the streets.
This year, however, SantaCon is making headlines before the actual event takes place. For one, the organizers have retained a civil rights lawyer because of the growing backlash against the event. "Attorney Norman Siegel says the Santa-clad participants have a right to express themselves as long as they don't break the law," The Associated Press reported.
The fact that SantaCon will coincide with Millions March New York City, which is a protest of police brutality in the wake of the grand jury decisions to not indict the police officers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, is also a concern for the organizers this year. With 44,000 people said to be attending, according to the event's page on Facebook, having inebriated Santas saunter past tens of thousands of people at the protest might not only be inappropriate but also unsafe.
With that in mind, the organizers recently announced that they would be "scaling back this weekend's festivities in order to create the lowest possible impact on the city we love while still maintaining our glorious traditions this holiday season." They also asked attendees to only visit the participating bars and venues on the list on the event's official website. "Please move around throughout the day from venue to venue but spend most of your time inside, not on the streets," the organizers wrote on the SantaCon website.
Well, it looks like this year's SantaCon is going to be either the most chaotic or the most boring one yet.
Image: Jason Eppink / Flickr
