From the Dec 16 – Dec 22, 2004 issue

News

The Anarchists Who Stole Xmas

Drunken Santas Come to Town

by Jenn Green

Santa Claus made a holiday appearance in a not-so-traditional blue suit Saturday evening at the Noc Noc bar on Second Avenue. The handful of blue St. Nicks--as opposed to red St. Nicks--were knocking back beers and wearing their political colors as part of Santarchy, an event that brought about 100 Santas to downtown Seattle last Saturday, December 11. They made stops at Pacific Place, the Seattle Center, Pike Place Market, and Westlake Mall--some even made an appearance at the Cirque du Noc fetish bazaar, where one man in a red velvet suit strapped himself into a sex swing, and another happily underwent a wax demonstration among the throng of people checking out neck corsets, spiked collars, and floggers.

Santarchy, an annual event held in big cities all over the U.S., descended on downtown to convey a not-so-Bing Crosby interpretation of the Christmas spirit. The Santarchists met at the Pike Place Market at noon, with about 50 people in Santa gear, and went on to various Seattle landmarks, handing out candy canes, taking pictures, and answering questions.

"The holidays have become pretty ridiculous," says one of Santarchy's participants, a Greenwood woman who goes by the name Bubbles the Evil Elf. "People are so entrenched in the culture, and the commercialism, that they must buy this and they must buy that," she says, pointing out that 80 Santas running around town on a high-jinks spree is no more weird than the season's mass-induced buying spree. "People are sheep," she adds, perhaps a bit self-righteously for ol' Santa. "They get too caught up in the twisted and commercialized version of Christmas."

Santarchy was started 10 years ago in San Francisco by about a dozen members of the Cacophony Society, a group that uses pranks and performance to make statements that tend to rub up against the mainstream. (Once upon a time, they hit S.F.'s trolley system dressed in clown suits and asked commuters where to get some Rice-a-Roni.)

Seattle has been holding its own version of Santarchy since the late '90s, but organizers feared it had recently morphed into nothing more than an elaborate pub-crawl. This year, organizers made an effort to highlight the event's original anti-Xmas spirit with some sober activities. Santas read from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" outside Seattle' s Central Library and handed out mutant toys, like one with a Barbie head on a snake body, to children. (An incredibly "sobering" experience for the Game Boy Advance kiddies, for sure.)

Santarchy participants say downtown businesses were fairly easygoing about their public displays, even though some were surprised or confused by it. Caroline Ullmann, communication assistant for the Seattle Public Library, says the guerrilla Santas were hardly noticed. "They were here briefly, but they didn't create any actual disturbance. They visited the building and then left." (According to one Santarchist, the gang entered the library after their Fifth Avenue Dr. Seuss reading to ride the elevators and noisily shush one other--and curious library patrons.)

The Santas moved on to downtown bars and clubs as the evening progressed, where one holiday prankster says some of the Santas became a little "sloppy and unruly." There were, however, no fights, one of the Santarchists reported afterward. At least not before she split Second Avenue's Nite Lite at 1:00 a.m.

editor@thestranger.com