Learn the True History of SantaCon in an SF IndieFest Documentary

At one point in new documentary SANTACON, Chuck Palahniuk is working very hard to bring meaning to his early involvement in SantaCon, the infamous festive event that wreaks havoc on cities all over the world every December.

“I had so wanted Santa to be real,” the Fight Club author says of his childhood. “I had played by all of Santa’s rules. And when I was finally told it was all a huge conspiracy and that the people I loved most in the world had all lied to me to produce a certain kind of behavior, I was just devastated. I couldn’t trust anyone again after that. Now it makes it very easy to believe in people like Jeffrey Epstein.”

Palahniuk’s words sound a lot like satire, yes, but his face suggests he’s being deadly serious.

If you live in San Francisco — where SantaCon started — you almost certainly know what this annual event now involves: thousands of drunk idiots in Santa suits, shouting, puking, flashing, fighting and dry humping their way through a bar crawl around the city. It is, to bystanders everywhere, a traveling dumpster fire.

To get to the real roots of today’s red-and-white menace, New York-based filmmaker Seth Porges tracked down the founders and early participants of SantaCon for his documentary. It turns out that the most annoying holiday party in history was started by the San Francisco Cacophony Society — the same kooks who started Burning Man. (Because of course it was them. Of course it was.)

Many of the founders — Palahniuk included — do their darnedest in SANTACON to try and drag meaning into the banquet of bufoonery they started. Almost all insist that SantaCon was originally intended to be artistic street theater and social commentary with a dash of Santa-based trauma on the side.

Luckily, generously supplementing Porges’ interviews is a wealth of gloriously ’90s home videos from four of the first five SantaCons. (The very first SantaCon happened in 1994, was the brainchild of Rob Schmitt and only involved about 20 people — none of whom seem to have documented it.) The camcorder footage in SANTACON does a much better job of depicting the early SantaCons than any nostalgic human ever could.

Based on this footage, there was indeed a concerted effort at the second SantaCon in 1995 to go after San Francisco’s elite while mocking capitalist values. That year, the Cacophony Society met up on the Embarcadero, then unleashed chaos on the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the Legion of Honor, Macy’s, and more. In Macy’s, the Santas chant “Spend your money! Charge it! Keep shopping!” Later that evening, one Santa notes that the group stopped at Nob Hill’s Huntington Park because it’s “where the evil lizard people control the Earth from.” The 1995 SantaCon invaded fancy events, plundered buffets and stole wine.

It was also a night that started with a ton of festive cheer — bewildered bystanders are clearly thrilled by the sight of the Santas chanting “ho ho ho!” and singing carols as they roam around downtown. If only that portion of the evening hadn’t culminated in SantaCon leader John Law getting hung from a lamppost in Union Square in front of hundreds of families out holiday shopping, they might have been onto a great thing.

“When you’re lynching Santa Claus in the middle of Union Square, you’re definitely making a statement,” says Cacophony Society member Chris Radcliffe, interviewed for SANTACON before his 2024 death, “whether you’ve thought it through or not.”

In his own interview, Law doubles down on the anti-capitalist sentiments of the early events. “It’s the job of pranksters and artists to fuck with the people who control everything,” he says. “Because you can’t actually go after their money — they’ll kill you. You can make fun of ’em though.”

SANTACON’s subsequent footage of Portland (1996) and Los Angeles (1997) stands as evidence that the anti-capitalist point might have died in ’95. Participants can be seen attempting repeatedly to recapture the anarchic magic of the ’95 SantaCon and mostly failing. Portland’s event was devoid of joy because of an overzealous police presence. And the highlight of LA’s event appears to be the Santas getting quietly kicked out of a strip club.

Though footage from SantaCon ’98 in New York City offers somewhat of a return to ’95 form, it’s clear that, before the new millennium had even started, SantaCon was a dead horse that had been flogged enough. If SANTACON proves nothing else, it’s that if SantaCon been left in ’95, the event would have remained golden, the stuff of local legend, lightning in a bottle. Instead, now we have … that terrible thing that we have.

The documentary culminates in John Law and Rob Schmitt making an appearance at a recent New York SantaCon — and looking utterly mortified at what they find. Law is visibly taken aback by the sea of drunken college kids that hail him as a hero. When one young man approaches him and slurs, “Look at this! You created this!” Law replies, “Well, we started it. You created this.”

Later, Law tells the filmmakers: “It’s pretty mind-boggling that such a kernel of an idea could grow into something so ridiculous. I mean, we live in an idiotic culture. So of course something silly and idiotic is going to rise to the top.”

But that’s the thing that sticks in the craw at the end of SANTACON. For all the interviewees’ commentary on artistic values and experimentation and freedom, what the home video footage ultimately proves is that SantaCon was always mostly about getting drunk and running amok. From the very beginning, many people were there purely to cause mayhem. It always involved bro jokes, flashing body parts and imbibing too much booze. SANTACON is smart enough to let the evidence speak for itself.

As early as 1998, Santas can be seen roaming through the streets chanting “Hey hey! Ho ho! Santa needs some blow!”

Is it any wonder future generations missed the point?

‘Santacon’ opens this year’s San Francisco IndieFest on Feb. 5, 2026. Filmmaker Seth Porges and original SantaCon participants are expected to appear for a Q&A after the screening.