(Pocket definition of SantaCon: People dress up in Santa costumes and go bar-hopping. Lots of people. There are official bar stops and routes. Then they get drunk and peel off as their sobriety/tolerance levels dictate. This is not unique to San Francisco, and it's only quite recently that it's become a big-deal thing here.)
All of this raises a lot of questions.
Why is this happening? is, at the most superficial level, the easiest of my questions to answer. SantaCon started in San Francisco, and it started as a weird prank. Now that flash dance mobs are everywhere and all the time and unimpressive, it's harder to imagine how a sudden and unannounced appearance of a group of Santas might have felt in, say, the 80s. But SantaCon used to be culture jamming, and now it's just pub-crawling and public drunkenness. More on that later.
Why Santa? Some quick theories would be, in no particular order:
1) It's funny/ironic to deconstruct/dismantle/demythologize/you-get-the-picture the childhood arbiter of Goodness by putting on his signature uniform and getting publicly drunk.
2) Santa is supposed to be unique, so again it's funny/ironic for him to suddenly be multiple.
3) The costume, or some version of it, is readily available on the cheap.
Why public drinking? or, Why is this happening, part 2? Now this is where I start to get confused. Because I'm not really sure what this is really about. As in, I'm not sure why it's fun to dress up as Santa and go bar-hopping with a whole lot of other people, some of whom you know and some of whom you don't, also dressed as Santa. I'm not sure why that is the thing one would want to do with one's Saturday afternoon.* We can look at some of the obvious answers: People like drinking, and even more when they're with their friends. But what is the specific appeal of the crowd? This, for me, is the most intriguing part. I tend to not enjoy large drunken crowds. It is a guarantee that some people will get too drunk. They will vomit, maybe near you, maybe on you. They may get pushy. The bars will all be crowded because you are bringing a crowd.
Now my central problem lies, I suspect, where it so often does: a failure to understand the appeal of doing something because a lot of other people are doing it. I think I've always been a contrarian, and mass culture and its seeming desire to get me (and everyone) join in has always gotten my back up. This may just be a fancy way of not calling myself an elitist. I'd like to think that's not all there is to it, though. The strongest feeling I have when viewing SantaCon (which, yes, I'm using as a stand-in for a lot of things right now) is not superiority, but confusion. I have a fundamental distrust of things that say, "If you do this thing that other people are doing, it will make you happy," that there is an objective "happiness" that we can all work towards, at the same time, in the same fashion, and that once we get there, it will be the same for all of us. I just don't think that's true. Nonetheless, that seems to be the messaging that most people receive and act on.
I know this is getting long, but I can't help but feel that this is also related to my confusion around beauty, and the ways in which most of us most of the time work so hard to change our appearances to chase after an abstract beauty. And then some people end up not looking like people anymore. They're going after the Form "Beauty," which is presumably something they've seen in a magazine, on TV, in films, etc., but it's not what they actually look like and then people end up looking generic and interchangeable.
I want people to be encouraged to pursue an individual idea of happiness, an individual idea of aesthetic. I guess I'm that much of an idealist/hippie, I guess I'm that naive. But I think it could work.
I invite your comments.
*I have friends who were at SantaCon today. I'm positive. And I'm positive that they're people I like and think are awesome. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not so much interested in criticizing SantaCon as I am in trying to understand it.
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I love your writing as always, Margaret. (And glad to see you posting a link to it on FB because I have a hard time keeping up with everything I subscribe to in my RSS feed!)
ReplyDeleteI agree with much of what you present, and ponder many of the same questions. Without any research, this particular phenomenon does indeed seem to be cheap, easy, predictable "fun"; you can go out and know that there will be others, like-minded (relatively) enough to be doing the same general thing, and thus approachable. Maybe it's like wearing an ironic shirt that you yourself have tired of, but you know you'll get at least one comment on it from a stranger. Just that with Santacon, it's a two-way street.
Also, to perhaps follow your "irony" reasoning and extend it, maybe the participants are taking a factor out of the equation in order *highlight* their individuality or amplify other observable or coaxable instances; the way that Einstein wore the same outfit everyday to spend less thought cycles on the unimportant. To use a more modern example, the delightfully fun band Man Man wear the same white high-school gym uniform to each of their whackily energetic shows so that they can concentrate on the performance. In summation, the suit is the "open gate," the "connected protocol"; communication can commence!
(I've never been in or around Santacon, and I just watched the French surrealist classic The City of Lost Children recently so this whole comment is my way of attempting to trick my sub-conscious from interposing any nasty St. Nicks into my dreamland(s).)
My short answer, although I would love to expound on it sometime in person, is that I enjoy the ability to go out and mingle with/meet/talk to strangers with the expectation that we're sharing an experience, and that makes us sympathetic to one another. It is a big reason why I enjoy Burning Man so much. Because you are all taking part in this experience together, one which is set up to be fun, open, and welcoming, it is easier to be friendly to strangers. Seems odd, I guess.. why not just be open and chatty with strangers all the time? But I find stranger chats unwelcome a lot of the time, and I am usually too shy to initiate myself. With everyone sharing a costume, I know there are a pre-indicated group of people that I can say "Hi!", high five, or whatever. Even if most of them would never actually be my friend in real life.
ReplyDeleteDominick: Thank you for the compliments! I like it that you and later Shelleth (hi Shelleth!) both brought up the approachability factor re: matching garb. It's funny, too, because at first I didn't really get the applicability of the Man Man analogy, but I think Shelleth jumped on it. So you must be on to something.
ReplyDeleteShellers, I'd love for you to expound in person. As you no doubt realized, you're one of the (awesome) people I was referencing in my footnote, so I really, really hope I succeeded in my desire to question rather than critique. I appreciate the Burning Man analogy because it is a) also something I have never participated in and yet b) something that I, as an outsider, remain somewhat wary of.
I am, as aways, exceedingly willing to learn.
Great post. Kasia and I have had this discussion many times. I'd love to discuss it with you in person. In fact you know what, lets just do that in January. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteYou got us all thinking Margaret! Well done! as Jamie said, we have been talking a lot about these things lately (I've just realised that we are one person on Blogger;). I am just as confused when it comes to beauty. For me 'beautiful' is somewhere very near 'natural', but there seem to be so many people, unfortunately mainly women, who don't see it this way. Let's take time, ageing.It's natural i.e. to me beautiful. Graceful. Human. Now try and name a woman in her 50's or 60's who is believed to be beautiful and who looks her age! There are some,but most of the ones people aspire to look like look on average 20 years younger! And that's freaky! I don't know if it has anything to do with hundres of Santas getting publicly drunk. Probably not. At least Santa is proud to look old and grandpa like! More about that in the thinnest country.
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