Every December, cities around the world brace themselves for a deluge of drunken revelers decked out in red suits and fake white beards partaking in the bar crawl known as SantaCon. The charity aspect at the center of many of them tends to be an afterthought among participants, and that’s allegedly the case with the man in charge of the massive gathering in New York City based on the fraud charges he’s been hit with.
SantaCon has a history that stretches back to 1994 and can credit its creation to the Cacophony Society, a group known for pulling public pranks in San Francisco that attempted to cause a scene by getting a bunch of people to dress up as St. Nick and parade through the streets.
It eventually made its way to other places, including New York City, which welcomed SantaCon for the first time in 1998 and has spent close to three decades grappling with what became a fairly infamous event that eventually became associated with drunk fistfights on streets covered in vomit, urine, and passed-out partiers…