It’s been a couple of years since I moved away from New York, and while there are a lot of things I still miss about it, there’s one annual tradition that I do not, nor ever will, shed tears over: The scourge that is SantaCon. And if there’s one thing that just reminded me exactly how much I do not miss this nightmare of an event, it’s this timelapse video of SantaCon 2015. Shot by animator and compositor Seth Minnich, the video makes the SantaCon-goers of New York look like nothing so much as an infestation — which is just about the most apt metaphor for the event that I can possibly think of. It’s a festive infestation, I’ll grant you… but an infestation is still an infestation.
The horror. The horror.
As Bustle’s Claire Warner noted on Sunday, SantaCon actually doesn’t have its roots in New York City, although that version of the event is arguably the most infamous one. The holiday-themed pub crawl first began in San Francisco in 1994, spreading in the more than two decades since to a huge variety of cities in a number of different countries. It may not bear much of a resemblance to its original incarnation at this point, though; in 2014, Meredith Hoffman described its journey for the Village Voice as going from “joyful performance art to reviled bar crawl.” Part of that probably depends on your perspective on the event — there are two kinds of people in the world, those who love SantaCon and those who hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns — but, well… do with that what you will.
Me? I'm in the second group of people, which is probably why I look at this timelapse video as essentially documenting the fall of McCarren Park to an army of ants clad in Santa hats and fake beards. Indeed, the participants of the event do seem to share certain qualities characteristic of a particular breed of ant: The crazy ant.
Crazy ants are “highly versatile” in terms of their habitats; they tend to infest houses and buildings when it the weather changes, though, not unlike SantaCon participants fighting through the cold that usually hits in December (although this year, admittedly, they were more likely flocking indoors due to the freakishly warm temperatures we saw this past weekend). Crazy ants are also omnivorous, meaning they’ll eat just about anything; so, too, will a SantaCon participant, particularly at the end of the crawl. The drunk munchies happen to the best us, after all. Signs of a crazy ant infestation include a seemingly never-ending trail of creatures scuttling to and from their nest; they may also be seen indoors foraging for sustenance, frequently in the form of libations. Gee, what’s that like? A SantaCon participant in search of the next holiday-themed booze bucket, perhaps? Maybe. Just sayin'.
I suppose at least the SantaCon infestation lasts for but one day; that means we're free of it for an entire year now. And SantaCon-ers? I hope you enjoyed yourself. Truly, I do.
But take a look at the timelapse video below and tell me you don’t see the similarities, too:
Image: Giphy
