Chris Bickford

SantaCon can be a bizarre experience for the uninitiated.  My friend Wick thinks it’s a strange cult, and won’t go near all those boozing, toking Santas.    I stumbled upon the annual event by accident, walking up Avenue A after an aimless stroll through Chinatown; first I saw two guys dressed up as Santa Claus walking in the direction of Tompkins Square Park…then I saw three other Santas round the corner headed towards the park. And then five more. As I neared the park, I saw a sea of red velvet bubbling around the Avenue A entrance…with smatterings of green and white from girls dressed as sexy elves. Literally hundreds of partying Santas, brown-bagging liquor and toking on doobies–ah, the sacrelige!

I was transfixed, and spent an hour or so milling amongst them taking photos.  Had I known about the event, I would have dressed for the occasion, I swear!   The revelers were nice enough to me, but without Santa gear I was basically a voyeur, a tourist, or worse, someone from the press…

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what it was all about.  Googling random phrases on Santa Claus brought up nothing.  Eventually my friend Cary Conover (his blog here) informed me about SantaCon, and sent me some pix of himself covering the event for the NY Times a few years back.   These folks apparently had been partying since 10 AM in their Christmas duds, and were joined by an international cast of revelers in cities around the world.   Crazy kids.  I wonder what the REAL Santa thinks of all these shenanigans…