SantaCon, the annual holiday flashmob-slash-daydrinking excuse, may be the only thing standing between us and the terrorists winning, but it wasn't always like that. The first SantaCon revelers weren't rebelling against consumerism. They didn't pay lip service to the First Amendment. They didn't pretend to care about oppressed people. They didn't try to justify the decadence—they just wanted to participate in a little public nihilism. Watch it play out in the video below, which looks a little like a Mr. Show sketch about a Limp Bizkit holiday album.
Uploader TeamSpider, who has a treasure trove of weird old videos on his YouTube channel, offers his fractured memories of the event, which he thinks occurred in 1998, although who can remember, what with all the puking and drinking and more puking clouding the old memory banks: "First SantaCon ever in NYC...can't remember much, cept that it was 3 days long, lots of people flew in for the weekend, with no clothes other than Santa Suits and ended up sleeping in the Park, returning on Airplanes in dirt and puke stained santa suits...and in case of the French santa, who was mauled by a Dalmation in front of a deli, a blood soaked suit."
"Much more decadent than santacons of late, and less santas who actually have yuppie-like jobs in attendance," he added, noting that the part where the Santas burst into an apartment building occurred on Avenue A, and "may have been the final straw with our landlord ( the first straw being not paying any rent)."
"What's with all the Santa Clauses?" a man asks the revelers in the video. "I don't understand. Help me understand." The kids participating today could probably learn a thing or two about "disruption" from their elders.
