They avoid driving into Manhattan at all costs during the Puerto Rican Day Parade because it turns the heart of the borough into a vast parking lot.
Fashion’s Night Out is an occasion to stay in if you live in SoHo.
And New Year’s Eve? Amateur hour — unless an out-of-town visitor drags a native kicking and screaming to Times Square.
Now, a new contender has emerged for the event that many New Yorkers most love to hate: SantaCon.
Every year since 1997, thousands of men and women have dressed up as Santas, elves, reindeer or some other holiday confection and descended on the city’s streets for a daylong bar crawl that begins with good cheer and, for many, inevitably ends in a blurry, booze-soaked haze. Some who come from Long Island and New Jersey get a head start on the festivities on the train ride into the city.
On Saturday, the Santas are coming to town again and, judging by the outpouring of vitriol and dread, it would seem that the city was expecting a visit not from St. Nick but from Satan.
Unlike other holiday gatherings, SantaCon remains shrouded in mystery. There is no official leader, no tickets or sign-in sheets, and the details of the route remain a closely guarded secret until the last possible moment. The rules — if they can be called that — are simple: Don’t make children cry, and dress up. This year, the organizers also took to Twitter to remind Santas that unsolicited sexual advances are wrong.
“Dirty ol’ Santa or Ho Ho Ho, just remember No Means No,” they wrote.
The post was a recognition by the Santas that they have something of a reputation problem.
In the weeks before their arrival on Saturday, signs began popping up on the Lower East Side telling Santas to stay away.
“Alcohol Soaked Father Christmas-themed flash mob not welcome here,” read one flier. “Take your body fluids and public intoxication elsewhere.”
John Cocchi, a police lieutenant in Hell’s Kitchen, where Santas converged last year, sent an open letter to bar owners urging caution when it came to serving Santas. “Having thousands of intoxicated partygoers roam the streets urinating, littering, vomiting and vandalizing will not be tolerated in our neighborhood,” he wrote.
An Anti-Con movement advocating for SantaCon-free zones has emerged, and the Santas have been pilloried on social media.
Even the transit authorities are wary. The Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and New Jersey Transit announced that no alcohol consumption would be allowed on their trains for 24 hours, starting at noon Saturday.
One of the few voices to speak up in favor of the Santas has been, perhaps surprisingly, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. “This is an event that we support,” he said. “It’s what makes New York New York.”
In response to all the humbuggery, the anonymous organizers who help coordinate the event broke from their usual policy of not taking questions from the news media. “We are all very aware of the backlash,” said the man chosen to speak for the group, who agreed to be identified only as Mr. Santa.
For the first time, organizers shared the route of the bar crawl with the authorities. There will also be “helper elves” to guide Santas who stumble off the path.
He noted that for every bar that does not want Santa to stop by, there are dozens that do. Every establishment on the tour, he said, has pledged to donate a percentage of the day’s profits to Toys for Tots. Last year, the event raised $45,000.
“We feel that the city has been turned into a mall,” Mr. Santa explained. “There is a lot of controlled excitement, but not a lot of loose excitement.”
Saturday is a chance for people to get loose. “It is an absurd holiday when you really think about it,” Mr. Santa said. He also defended the drinking.
“Holiday parties involve drinking spirits,” he said. It is only because this party takes place during the day and people are dressed in costumes that it has attracted so much attention.
The public anger probably should not come as a surprise. From the outset, the point was to cause a ruckus.
The inspiration for the event is said to have come from a Danish theater group called Solvognen, whose exploits were detailed in Mother Jones magazine. In 1974, the group gathered dozens of Santas to storm a department store and hand out items from the shelves to customers as “presents.”
After reading the article, a group in San Francisco took up the idea and in 1994 organized the first documented SantaCon. It was a relatively small gathering of several dozen and included the fake-lynching of Santa Claus, according to the group’s website, santarchy.com.
Since then, SantaCon has evolved, taken on a life of its own and spread from Belfast to Moscow. In New York City, the event has grown from several hundred people in the first year to an estimated 30,000 last year.
This year, the Santas will converge at 10 a.m. near Tompkins Square Park in the East Village and eventually make their way to Brooklyn, ending near Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Mr. Santa acknowledged that the sight of a Santa vomiting on himself or a Santa passed out on the street does have a memorable — or infamous — quality to it.
But every Santa must take responsibility for his or her own actions. “No one controls SantaCon,” he said.
