SantaCon: Kringle Chaos is Coming to Town

Dec. 11, 2009— -- There are rules: You must wear a Santa suit or facsimile thereof. A hat is not enough.

Be jolly, let random strangers sit on your lap, give out gifts and frequently bellow "ho,ho,ho!"

SantaCon -- celebrated in several cities around the country this weekend -- is one of the biggest pub crawls in the world.

The main requirement of this highly disorganized event is that revelers in red be prepared to meander en masse, inspiring (and drinking) good cheer.

Also known as Santarchy, Santa Rampage, the Red Menace and Santapalooza, it's promoted on homegrown Web sites as a "not-for-profit, non-political, non-religious and non-logical Santa Claus convention, attended for absolutely no reason."

And you better watch out! Santa, after all, is an anagram for Satan.

Stay Up to Date on the Latest Travel Trends from ABC News on Twitter

From Vancouver to London, the annual event is noted not only for its collection of cheap Santa suits, but for merrily bawdy behavior, including the singing of naughty Christmas carols.

"Somebody has to decide where, and we all show up," said Steve Hopson, a professional photographer who plans take part in festivities in Austin, Texas, Saturday.

"There are not real organizers," he told ABCNews.com. "The word just gets out and we all show up in red clothing."

Celebrants are not supposed to mess with children or policemen or get so inebriated they ruin it for everyone else, at least not in New York City.

"SantaCon is not a bar crawl, it's a convention," notes the Santacon Web site. "Santa does not advocate breaking open container laws! Pay your own damn bar tab and tip bartenders well for putting up with Santa."

Or more specifically: "Don't be that Santa."

"No force on earth can stop 100 Santas," proclaims a Web history of Santacon and its other iterations.

Internet legend has it that the first event was held in San Francisco in the 1970s. The founder of the city's Suicide Club organized a prank event after reading about a Danish group that mobbed a Copenhagen department store dressed as Santas.

Before then, the club was notorious for climbing suspension bridges, throwing costumed events in cemeteries and even infiltrating cult groups like the Moonies and the American Nazi Party, leaving suicide notes from the "Caliph of the North Pole."

The concept was resurrected by the city's Cacophony Society in 1994, which hoped to create a psychedelic reaction similar to public pranks that mixed guerrilla street theater and public intoxication.