{"id":80794,"date":"2014-12-12T16:02:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T21:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80794"},"modified":"2014-12-12T16:18:29","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T21:18:29","slug":"most-wonderful-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/12\/most-wonderful-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Most Wonderful Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"6493431553_35c51be494_b\"<\/a>

Santas overtake London, 2011. Photo: Garry Knight, via Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

Two winters ago, I accidentally found myself in the East Village on the day of SantaCon. For those fortunate enough to have been spared it, this is an annual holiday event in which punters in Santa costumes (mere hats won’t cut it) pay an entry fee toward charity and then go on a daylong bar crawl. This happens in cities across the globe. My most vivid memory of that nightmarish evening is a single lewd elf stopping traffic as he squatted in the middle of Second Avenue and slowly, hypnotically, rotated his hips to music only he could hear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SantaCon is one of the easiest targets for snark, but it really is pretty awful. The NYC branch says it\u2019s going legit this year\u2014no public nuisances, no blocking traffic, no street urination or gutters running with vomit\u2014and to this end the organizers have hired a prominent lawyer and posted rules of conduct to its site. (Exposing yourself in public is a sex offense, it reminds the Santas.) In further efforts to curb the charitable, drunken Santas\u2019 behavior, various commuter trains, including the Long Island Railroad, have banned pre-gaming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This Saturday, grotesquely, SantaCon falls on the same date as a day of anger: Millions March NYC, in which activists will gather at Washington Square Park to protest the killings of Mike Brown and Eric Garner.\u00a0They will probably not literally converge, if only because the East Village has wearied of SantaCon and fewer establishments are willing to participate. SantaCon organizers acknowledged the situation, stating on their site that\u00a0\u201cThis is a stressful time for New York City, and we are in the\u00a0midst of a protest\u00a0that is spreading the NYPD thin. SantaCon has compassion for these civic organizations and is working with them to have a peaceful and joyful holiday celebration.\u201d SantaCon NYC typically attracts upwards of 25,000 people, so this is a real issue of safety and resources.<\/p>\n

(I thought this was the most terribly on-the-nose story of the week, but then I read that a TGI Friday\u2019s in Brooklyn had obtained a drone to fly around with a sprig of mistletoe<\/a>. When a New York Daily News<\/em> stringer went to report on the festive robot, the drone hit her in the face and cut her nose.)<\/p>\n

There are too many cheap jokes to be made here, like so many rejected SNL sketches. But what\u2019s the point? In the immortal words of Doris Day\u2019s Jan Morrow, \u201cSome jokes are just too obvious to be funny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two winters ago, I accidentally found myself in the East Village on the day of SantaCon. For those fortunate enough to have been spared it, this is an annual holiday event in which punters in Santa costumes (mere hats won’t cut it) pay an entry fee toward charity and then go on a daylong bar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[16357,16356,1442,4237,5398,4027,125,3863,16355],"class_list":["post-80794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-bro-culture","tag-bros","tag-christmas","tag-east-village","tag-holidays","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york-city","tag-protests","tag-santacon"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSantaCON Is Coming, and We All Must Suffer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein shares her memories of one of New York\u2019s most reviled public celebrations.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/12\/most-wonderful-time\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Most Wonderful Time by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 12, 2014 \u2013 Two winters ago, I accidentally found myself in the East Village on the day of SantaCon. 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