Santa Con isn't about Christmas, or Santa, or holiday cheer. It's about binge day-drinking and public urination. In Hoboken?
December 9, 2019

John Oliver is on vacation until January (where do I get one of those sweet HBO gigs?) but he released a web special to YouTube to talk about SantaCon.

SantaCon takes place in Hoboken, New Jersey. Revelers dressed in Santa/Christmas garb take a Saturday afternoon to engage in a pub crawl with multiple drink specials to add to the merriment.

Initially designed as a "charity event," Santa Con has become a $75,000 headache for local law enforcement. Drunk Santas engage in public behavior (urination, brawls, etc.) that doesn't put city leadership in the holiday mood. The original organizers have abandoned the event, even holding a funeral for Santa Con in 2014.

John Oliver went further, calling Santa Con a "terrifying combination of binge-drinking, public urination, and trauma to small children that decades of therapy will never manage to reverse."

Watch John Oliver read his ode to the stupid tradition of Santa Con, above.

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