I Killed SantaCon

December 14, 2014

Why? We staged a funeral for SantaCon and the number one question I got from confused SantaCon revelers was “Why would anyone want to kill this?” Since I didn’t have a mirror that I could simply hold up to my interrogators, thereby letting them gaze upon the answer to their own naïve question, I would have to take a few minutes, partially out of character as Santa’s undertaker, to deliver what amounted to a sermon. By the end of the day I had my lecture boiled down to one simple realization: when SantaCon was just a few of us, we would pause at some point during the day and say to ourselves proudly “Only in San Francisco!”

We believed then that it was truly only in San Francisco that you could conceive of such a radical form of passive protest cum social outing and actually get enough freaks to join you. You were also assured that the people who did come brought their own mischief to further enrich the already deeply embedded level of disruption you get when travelling anonymously as a herd of clone Santas. Mischief was the initial intent, of course, although protesting the hyper-commercialization of Christmas was always in the crosshairs.

But it wasn’t total anarchy. There was even a code of conduct crudely adapted in the 4 Fucks of SantaCon that served as rules of engagement. These were easily remembered, even in the advanced stages of inebriation:

Don’t fuck with kids

Don’t fuck with cops

Don’t’ fuck with security

Don’t fuck with Santa

We all owe SantaCon to the genius of The Cacophony Society. One of the fundamental tenets was “you may already be a member”, implying the call to action “BYO mischief”. For many years we saw an abundance of creativity and effort put forth by Santas. Some of the great memories involve corndogs straight from the deep fryer, dance parties in alleys strewn with garbage, and chanting “Buy more shit!” at shoppers from a downtown department store escalator. Although truthfully, one year we were convince the flame had gone out. We were reluctant to give up on SantaCon. We found fresh territory was the answer and diverted via AmTrak to Sacramento where they had no idea what was coming. Coming back late in the day we joined up with the SF SantaCon only to realize they had sorta dropped the ball once the core group vacated. It ominously portended the years to come.

And so it was. Sadly, the last 5 years has been low level effort and herd mentality at best. The leaders are absent, which I’m kind of OK with. What’s not cool are the tickets on sale in Reno for the Santa Pub Crawl, or advertising your Santa suit cleaning service with hand out flyers, or click-bait websites that redirect to online costume and party paraphernalia stores. At this point is has to stop for sure, but the true crime against SantaCon is the lack of innovation. The entire message has been lost.

But how do you kill something with an avalanche worth of social momentum? This is how it went out on an email list on December 3^rd:

 “So last year while driving around SF I notice the doucheholes were still doing Santa Con...without any of the novelty, bonhomie or style that we were able to muster back in the 90s (or whenever).
 Anybody up for going off axis this year and staging Santa's funeral at an appropriate stop along their route? I'm thinking all black Santa outfits, a coffin/sleigh pulled by eight liveried reindeer and a funeral march of veiled mourning elves.
 Would be great to go Viking style and set his sleigh adrift (and on fire) into the sea or something. He was a Nordic dude, right?
 Anyhow...”

SantaCon is global now, so our claim to "only in SF" is long since lost. But since we couldn't expect anything new and creative from the current batch of Santas, we had to prank our own prank and put SantaCon someplace they can’t get to it. By declaring SantCon dead, we reclaim some of the overly congested bro-space and bring it out of the fog. Hopefully we've left a void that can be used for someone else to be creative, show initiative and develop something new. That’s the space we worked within for many years until we reached SantaCon's cultural elastic limit. Maybe with a little wiggle room and a little less momentum, we might get to see something fun again.

Bring it.                                                          

~ Truck Boy