{"id":376024,"date":"2025-11-13T13:36:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/376024\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T13:36:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:36:33","slug":"new-documentary-premiering-at-doc-nyc-santacon-explores-the-origins-of-new-yorks-most-chaotic-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/376024\/","title":{"rendered":"New documentary premiering at DOC NYC \u2018SANTACON\u2019 explores the origins of New York\u2019s most chaotic holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"A\t\t\t<\/p>\n

A glimpse into the modern SantaCon in New York City as seen in \u201cSANTACON.\u201d<\/p>\n

Credit: Pinball Party Productions<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever found yourself in New York City on a weekend in December surrounded by thousands of Santas bar-hopping around the neighborhood, you may have been affected by SantaCon.<\/p>\n

Now a worldwide phenomenon, SantaCon descends upon New York City once a year. Though New York City\u2019s SantaCon has a philanthropic element to it (tickets sold for SantaCon go to support several charitable causes), the day is often regarded as a drunken day of chaos, with Santas stumbling around the city.<\/p>\n

But where did SantaCon even come from? Director Seth Porges (\u201cClass Action Park,\u201d \u201cHow To Rob a Bank\u201d) sought to find the answers in his new documentary \u201cSANTACON.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>The Santas make a mockery out of a playground in Portland in 1996.Credit: Pinball Party Productions<\/p>\n

When asked why he wanted to make a documentary about SantaCon, Porges said that it seemed like too stupid of a subject to base a film on because he, like many people, only knew about the effect SantaCon has on New York City. However, Porges told amNewYork that he had met up with his friend Scott Beale when he learned that Beale had started SantaCon with his friends several years ago in San Francisco, and it piqued his interest.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Beale] started telling me that he had personally video recorded many of the early years of SantaCon, and he still had the footage. When I saw these tapes, that\u2019s when I was kind of blown away,\u201d said Porges. \u201cI was taken back in time to 1990s and this feeling of freedom and possibility and wonder that just permeated through the footage, and I just really wanted to transmit that feeling to people, and that\u2019s why I wanted to make this movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSANTACON\u201d follows the day\u2019s anarchical origins as a prank in San Francisco and follows as it descends into madness as one of the most hated holidays. Founded by a performance art group called the Cacophony Society, the day initially was created to make moments of wonder, awe and absurdity.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>The Santas sing Christmas carols with Michael Moore in New York in 1998, the first year the
event invaded the city.Credit: Pinball Party Productions \"The<\/a>The Santas take over Central Park in 1998.Credit: Pinball Party Productions<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no agenda beyond that. The idea was to show people something they\u2019ve never seen before, and hopefully that\u2019ll spark joy or creativity and remind people that the world is bigger than they think it is,\u201d said Porges.<\/p>\n

Porges told amNewYork that as SantaCon began to grow beyond the reach of the original creators \u2014 SantaCon was never a brand of copyright that they owned \u2014 and when the internet caught wind of it, that\u2019s when it started to go off the rails.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe modern New York SantaCon has nothing to do with the people who started it,\u201d said Porges. \u201cNew York\u2019s is the most famous and certainly the largest, certainly the most overwhelming, but there\u2019s Santacons in literally hundreds of cities all across the world. With the film, you kind of see it spread. It goes viral, it kind of becomes a virus, spreading around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the documentary, the original SantaCon creators confront the New York City celebration, seeing how it has all come to exist as we know it. Porges acknowledges that there are elements of the original SantaCon that have carried over the years, but it was that bit of whimsy that made it more appealing back in the 90s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the old footage of the original SantaCons, it\u2019s not so much that the Santas themselves are acting that differently. There\u2019s always a little bit too much alcohol, always a little bit of bad behavior, always a lot of chaos. It\u2019s the people around them and how different their expressions and their reactions are,\u201d said Porges. \u201cThat\u2019s what really struck me, because now we have all been exposed to SantaCon. We know what this is, we know that this is kind of gross, and the ability for it to offer any sort of surprise and shock and awe is largely gone as a result. But back in the 90s, nobody had ever seen this before. They didn\u2019t know what to make of it. And so in that confusion and in that absurdity, you see people try to make sense of what they\u2019re seeing, and in doing so, you see these expressions of joy and wonder and confusion that I find just truly amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Original<\/a>Original Santas Rob Schmitt (left) and John Law return to the event they created for the first
time in decades. (What could go wrong?)Credit: Pinball Party Productions<\/p>\n

Porges hopes that those who watch \u201cSANTACON\u201d are able to find the bits of joy in the story and see how it can be applied to their own lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you continue to go on with feelings of creativity and collaboration and joy and wonder in a world that seems designed to squash all of those feelings? How do you keep on going through it all, despite it all? And that\u2019s what I think,\u201d said Porges. \u201cThe creators of SantaCon, the original members of the Cacophony Society, that\u2019s what they gave me is this understanding about what it means to have fun for the sake of having fun, what it means to be creative for the sake of being creative, and how do we hold on to that in a world in which those sentiments become more and more distant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSantaCon\u201d premieres at DOC NYC on Nov. 13, with additional screenings on Nov. 15 and Nov. 20. The film will also screen online from Nov. 13-30. For more information, visit docnyc.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Credit: Pinball Party Productions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A glimpse into the modern SantaCon in New York City as seen in \u201cSANTACON.\u201d Credit: Pinball Party Productions…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":376025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,148778,3192,405,403,180883,5226,5225,5228,5227,180884,180885,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-376024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-doc-nyc","10":"tag-documentary","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-santacon","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-santacon","19":"tag-seth-porges","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115542661730518540","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}