SantaCon is a charitable, non-commercial, non-political, nonsensical Santa Claus Convention that happens once a year in December. In the past 9 years, SantaCon has raised over $450,000 for charitable causes partnering among with: City Harvest NYC; New York Cares; Figment NYC; Dance Parade NYC.
SantaCon began in San Francisco in 1994, inspired by a Mother Jones article on the Danish activist theatre group Solvognen. In 1974, Solvognen gathered dozens of "Santas" in Copenhagen to hand out items from the shelves of a department store to customers as “presents” before they were arrested. Staged as street theater by a local prankster group, the Cacophony Society, which had grown out of the earlier Suicide Club, the aim was to make fun of Christmas and the rampant consumerism associated with the holiday. Originally called Santarchy and influenced by the Surrealist movement, Discordianism, and other subversive art currents, it was not intended to be a recurrent event.
SantaCon came to Portland in 1996 to Seattle in 1997, and to Los Angeles and New York in 1998.
It has since evolved and spread to 44 countries around the world.
In New York City, by far the largest SantaCon venue, the event nowadays has been criticized for widespread drunkenness and sporadic violence.
This reportage took place in NYC, December 2009.