It's no more Mr. Nice Guy for Santa Claus. Once the arbiter of bad behavior, now hundreds of Santas have decided that naughty is the way to go after all - and this weekend will be gathering to sing lewd songs, build weird toys, and get staggeringly drunk. Part parody of Christmas consumerism, part pranksterism, and part simple debauchery, the Cheap Suit Santa events are in their fourth year, and have turned into a burgeoning national mini-movement to recapture the underside of Santa. "Starting after Thanksgiving, Christmas is just all about selling stuff," explains an event coordinator who calls himself Santa Squid. "We're taking back Santa, we're making Christmas fun again."
The Cheap Suit Santa event began in 1994 when 25 Cacophony Society members and their friends took to the streets of downtown San Francisco in rented Santa suits - drinking beer from Pine Sol bottles, staging Santa lynchings, singing naughty Christmas carols, and generally having a raucous good time. The 1995 event drew 50 similarly drunken Santas, and also garnered a lot of negative attention: after a few Christmas decorations were purloined during a romp through the Emporium department store, police forced a bus full of Santas to the side of the road and arrested some suspects (a humorless police report accused the Santas of "reeking havoc" and behaving in an "un-Christmas like fashion").
In 1996, the naughty Santas moved their event to Portland, Oregon, where police had been warned of their arrival; the evening climaxed with a stand-off at a local mall as 100 jolly Santas sang Christmas carols to a line of police in full riot gear. This year, the Santarchy was lower profile, taking place last weekend in Los Angeles, where 200 Santas converged on Muscle Beach, sat on another Santa's lap at the Church of Scientology, and visited a punk rock show.
San Francisco will see two tamer Santa events this weekend, starting with a reunion at the Hotel Utah club, where Santa-suited locals will converge to sing karaoke. On Sunday, there'll be the Naughty Santa's Bizarre Bazaar - an off-beat crafts fair that includes a lecherous Santa in a G-string, a twisted toy workshop, bands and, of course, lots of beer and red-suited partiers.
Not everyone likes the anti-Santy. The coordinators have gotten flak from police, the media, and concerned parents - who are likely worried that the sight of 50 drunken Santas in one place might not mesh with what they've told children about Santa's existence. "They say we're ruining kids' Christmas, looting and stealing," explains Santa Squid. "But our Santas aren't malicious towards kids. We separate the adult thing from the kids thing, and give out candy to the kids."
And as professor Stephen Nissenbaum, author of the book The Battle for Christmas, points out, the Cheap Suit Santas are actually carrying on a very long tradition of prankster Santas. The domestic, jovial Santa popularized by The Night Before Christmas and a million toy commercials was widely rivaled in the 1800s by raucous, "counter-versions" of Santa Claus that went around playing tricks. One such version was the Belsnickle's (in German, "Santa as a beast"), masked Santas who would roam the cities of Pennsylvania barging into people's houses, terrorizing children and singing drunken Christmas carols. In the Christmas Blues, songs popularized among African Americans in the early 1900s, Santa was also portrayed as a horny old goat who sneaked into houses, had sex with the mothers, and bribed kids with presents to keep their mouths shut.
Naughty Santas, Nissenbaum explains, have become increasingly marginalized, "but it's the kind of thing that will never disappear, because the official culture is always going to get mocked at its most sacred places," he says. "It's hard not to think of Santa as a dirty old man, especially with today's concern about child abuse. Santa Claus is a figure who dangles kids on his lap - it's got to give rise to subversive thoughts."
And the scandalous Santa meme certainly is spreading - this year, "unofficial" Santa events will also take place in Houston and Atlanta, where pranksters have been inspired by the Cheap Suit Santa Web site to stage their own local mayhem. San Francisco's one annual event has blossomed into multiple events that could eventually happen all year round.
"It's certainly become a phenomenon, and it's weird to see how it will spread," says Santa Squid. "Now when I see a Santa image, I see a different thing."
