Waiting till the night before Christmas to crash a party? Thinking your New Year’s Eve plan is going to just somehow magically fall into place? Well you’re not in Kansas anymore Blue Frog!* Here’s the thing; I know its a pain in the butt to plan your life so far ahead, so I’m going to do it for you! All you have to do is play along. Also for the picky sort I’m putting all the info you need to make your own choices up on the blog, so keep coming back for updates as I get them ok? Jingle Bells!
*You’ll need to listen to the Choogle Challenges to understand this.
Lets start with Christmas! You’re in Mumbai, its 30 degrees, chances of snow – slim to none. But never fear the SantaCon is here! That’s right, my friend CrazyEddie (a title we don’t bestow on anyone lightly) introduced us to this concept back in 2006 and now we do it every year. Bit first things first get your gear; I bought a fabulous fake tree (which the guys at Crawford market made a valiant attempt to sell as real pine, while I and a friend stuttered, “but yeh to plastic hain!”) loads of decorations, a hat and even these jingle bell reindeer ears, all for the bargain (and you must bargain) price of approximately 3000rs.
Now, back to the SantaCon, Wikipedia defines SantaCon as “a mass gathering of people dressed in their various interpretations of Santa Claus costumes and performing publicly on streets and in bars in cities around the world. The focus is on spontaneity, creativity, and the improvisational nature of human interaction while having a good time and spreading cheer and goodwill to all they come across.”
We generally do it like a pub crawl and jump from bar to bar around Mumbai (dressed in red, green, white, silver, Santa gear and reindeer ears and do colorful shots. Doesn’t that sound like fun? If you’d like to join the party grab some friends, get your holiday digs on and pub hop around Mumbai on December 25th 2009 (we’re bound to bump into each other, besides I’ll be tweeting our location as the night progresses!)
Didjya Know?
The first SantaCon took place in San Francisco in 1994 and was sponsored by The San Francisco Cacophony Society. The original inspiration came from an earlier SF adventure club called The Suicide Club who’s founder came up with the idea after reading an article about a Danish political who mobbed a Copenhagen Department store just before Christmas. However, the first American and all subsequent SantaCons around the world are non-political, purely surreal Santa prank events. Read the full story here.
More than 13,000 Santas set a Guinness World Record in Ireland on December 9th, 2007.
And yet in 2006, something like 70,000 Santas took over Moscow. I guess the Guiness people weren’t there.