There's a woman in a Santa hat stripping in front of the Bellagio fountains. She removes her red halter top to reveal a shiny red bra flashing with tiny Christmas lights. Then, off go her fuzzy red buttless chaps. She removes the pants under them, which leaves her sitting on a sidewalk of Las Vegas Boulevard wearing only her shiny skivvies. "Am I going to go to jail for indecent exposure?" she asks in a Hispanic accent while she pulls the chaps back up and straps on a Camel pack, sipping from the straw to stay either hydrated or intoxicated. It seems like a rhetorical question—it's not as though she's scrambling for her shirt just in case another Santa tells her "Yes."
That's right, another Santa. There are a few of them standing here in the 100-or-so-degree heat at 8:30 on a Friday night. Four arrived together, all of them look in their early- to mid-20s. One cute little pixie-style elf is in a green dress, a second in red shorts and a green top; a female Santa is wearing red velvet pants, shirt and hat and drinking from her flask. A more traditional male Santa, smoking a cigarette and drinking some kind of alcohol from a bottle, flips off passersby and cameramen. They're soon joined by the stripping Santa, who takes their pictures with her phone, and a pimp-style Santa, wearing a red shirt and khaki pants with a red boa and a floppy red hat and sunglasses.
"Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!" the female Santa yells to passersby. The crowds barely flinch. Some cast odd, half-smiles at the gathering. Others keep their eyes straight ahead and quicken their pace.
They call it "Santa Con," or "Santarchy" and it's a kind of disorganized Las Vegas version of a flash mob, which is a performance art/political/Internet-wackiness-inspired movement that's been making its way across the country. Those involved agree to appear at a certain spot at a certain time and do a certain thing. Usually it lasts a matter of seconds and then dissipates. But this one's just not dissipating. They're scheduled to sing and bar hop until the wee hours of the morning, a Santa-style tradition that started in San Francisco in 1994 and, according to www.santarchy.com, has spread across the country and even the world. It's the first time someone's attempted such a gathering in Las Vegas, and now they're waiting for the water show with Elton John's "Your Song" to end so they can launch into Christmas carols.
But the question remains: Why? The answer: "We're rampaging," says a girl Santa—one who remains clothed. "The goal is to do things we can't do at home." So you don't live here? "Santa doesn't live here." Nope, they're not giving it up that easily. That, and perhaps they don't have a purpose. The players won't give their names, each using "Santa" instead. Though they reek of beer, they won't say what Santa likes to drink, other than Christmas cheer. And they talk of how the elves are going on strike because their jobs are being outsourced.
The stripper Santa—who's actually in town from LA for a business convention—pauses from her picture-taking to correct someone who blasphemes the show by calling it Santarchy. "It's not Santarchy because I think Santarchy carries a somewhat negative connotation," she says. But before she can explain what it is, her fellow Santas have launched into an off-key rendition of "Deck the Halls," and she rushes over to join them. Then they start altering lyrics, inserting "guilty pleasures" instead of "merry measures" and converting "Feliz Navidad" to "Police Navidad." As they sing, the stripper Santa dances around, throwing her friend's boa around a passing man and trotting behind him as though he's a reindeer and they're riding to the North Pole. He plays along, as though it's the most normal thing in the world.