Festivals

If you’re in San Francisco this Saturday, you’re going to meet Santa Claus.

Actually, you’re going to meet 17,000 Santa Clauses.

SantaCon, the annual event in which people dress up as Santa and roam the streets of any participating city, was inspired by a protest by a Danish performance art group in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1974 and started in San Francisco in 1994.

This coming Saturday in San Francisco will be much like any other Saturday in December. Packed cable cars going up and down our steep hills, early holiday shoppers milling through Westfield Mall, and groups of people taking selfies in front of the gigantic Christmas tree that's posted up in Union Square every year. Except for one thing - there's also going to be thousands of people dressed like Santa Claus.