Get ready, San Francisco: SantaCon 2025 will descend on the city this weekend once again. The iconic (many would also say infamous) holiday bar crawl is celebrating its 30th year this Saturday, December 13. The group of jolly Santas will start at Union Square at noon on Saturday and continue to numerous bars across the city throughout the day. For many, SantaCon is a treasured tradition, with people meticulously planning festive outfits. You can expect to see everything from a sexy Grinch costume to a classic Santa suit. For many, the bar crawl is met with more apprehension, and some businesses often post strict “No Santas” signs at their doors in an effort to avoid the locust-like swarm of holly jolly day drinkers. Thankfully, there are still plenty of places for the swarm of Santas to go on their bar crawl.
While today SantaCon is a major event that has spread to over 70 cities, drawing thousands of participants at each location, it actually started as a much smaller group in San Francisco. In 1994, 38 Santas took to the streets of San Francisco, starting with a snowball fight at an ice rink at the Embarcadero. From there, the jolly Santas boarded a rented bus that shuttled them around the city, crashing numerous Christmas parties. From there, SantaCon was born, eventually spreading to numerous cities around the United States. The original group of 38 jolly Santas was part of the Cacophony Society, a counter-culture social club in San Francisco.
Today, the event attracts thousands of participants each year. SantaCon’s goal is to bring together fun-loving Santa enthusiasts and revelers for a holiday bar crawl across SF. The event is open to all adults over 21, and we recommend leaving the kids at home (no one needs childhood memories of drunk Santa). The event is free, and organizers urge people to beware of potential scams, as there are no tickets to SantaCon.
You can learn more about SantaCon here.