In matters of Christmas security, Santa’s Defense Forces rely on a homegrown candy cane-based weapon system. The heart of the system is the Candy Cane Carbine (C3), a modular candy small arm that can be adapted for a variety of roles, from close-ranged gifting to long range bah-humbug suppression. And for gravely naughty or armor-plated threats to Christmas and Santa, there is the candy cane of last resort—the Mark 12 Tenenbaum Launcher—which fires a ballistic christmas tree.

The candy canes and Santa’s Little Secret Service/Santa’s Defense Forces will be deployed at this year’s San Francisco Santacon on December 10. For more of my ballistic art, see the Playing Card Uzi.

photos 1-4 by EDW Lynch, photo 5 by Zack Lara

If you’re heading out to a Santacon event this holiday season, the original desaturated Santa, BrodyQat, has posted a great online tutorial on how to create the desaturated Santa look. Her tutorial is titled “It’s not easy being desaturated” which may be an indication of the difficulty level to create this unique look.

Desaturated Santa costume only works when there are lots of other red Santas for contrast. Otherwise you just look sort of weird and sickly due to the gray body paint, and it’s not immediately obvious what you’re up to. It also doesn’t look as striking at night under artificial light, even with other Santas around.

Desaturated Santa is for daytime SantaCon, in my opinion. It’s way too much time, money and energy to put into without having a lot of other Santas for visual contrast.

image via BrodyQat

photo by BenZero

A Guinness World Record attempt for the Largest Gathering of Naked Santas will happen on December 10, 2011 at 3 PM in San Francisco during Santacon 2011. The group is being led by Tex Allen and on the day before the event, he will announce the official location where the display of Santa-filled public nudity will happen.

Here’s the rules:

* You have to be naked, but CAN and SHOULD be at least wearing a Santa hat. Boots/boot covers and gloves are also OK. Otherwise, it’s Full Monty or nuthin’

* No Elves, No Reindeer, etc. We LOVE all Santacon revellers, but Guinness will be strict about the “Santa” requirement.

* You’ll have to sign some paperwork with your name, address and email and OK us to take your photo, that’s part of the Guinness rules too.

image via Tex Allen

Santacon 2010 in Okinawa, Japan

Santacon 2010 in Paris, France

It’s time to suit up for Santacon 2011 and fortunately there are plenty of Santarchy events to choose from this year around the world. The fun kicked off on November 13, 2011 in Annapolis, Maryland and continues through December in a plethora of cities all over the globe.

photos by Robert Mallon and Nicolas Vankieken

Dan Glass wrote a Wired Underwire story about Nick Brewer and his Robot Santa which made another appearance this year at Santacon NYC. Nick is working on a documentary “Santas On The Move” about his Santa Robot and Santacon.

photo by stu.photo

Jesse Nichols shot this photo of an awesome Santa Squid that he came across at San Francisco Santacon 2010.

photo by Jesse Nichols

“Christmas is Certain” features the first-ever official footage of Santa’s armed helpers in action. Until now, this was an untold Christmas story.

I have had the great honor of serving Santa as both Detail Commander of Santa’s Little Secret Service and as Captain of the 12th Nutcracker Regiment, an elite corps within Santa’s Defense Forces (SDF.) I am the first to admit we are a necessary evil. For centuries, Santa’s neutrality and special diplomatic status permitted him to travel freely throughout the world during the Christmas Operational Window. But in the last 100 years, the world has become increasingly dangerous and uncertain. In order to ensure Santa’s safety and uninterrupted Christmas operations, it has become necessary for the North Pole to take precautions. The result: Santa’s elvish security agencies and the military units of the SDF.

Our most recent deployment was at this month’s San Francisco Santacon. Santa’s armed helpers fielded a comprehensive security task force for Santa’s Sleigh One, code-named Operation Chimney Sweep.

I am authorized to tell you this not to alarm you or any good boys and girls. Rather, be reassured by the elaborate measures undertaken by Santa’s helpers to ensure his safety and the certainty of Christmas. And to the naughty boys and girls, the enemies of Santa, I offer a warning: We see you when you’re sleeping. We know when you’re awake.

I wish you and yours a satisfactory and secure Christmas Operational Window.

Captain EDW “Pine Nut” Lynch
12th Nutcracker Regiment
Santa’s Defense Forces

Additional Laughing Squid coverage of Santa’s armed helpers:

Santa’s Defense Forces Protect Santa In San Francisco as Part of Operation Yule Storm
Santa’s Little Secret Service Returns To Protect The Easter Bunny
Santa’s Little Secret Service, Protecting Jesus Christ & Frank Chu

photo by Sally McIntyre

Dr. Coolsex Comedy documented Elves staging a protest at this year’s Santacon in New York City.

via YouTube Trends

Our friend Sandwich Girl has informed us that Santarctica 2010, a Santacon event in Antarctica, takes place on Sunday, December 12th starting 2pm at the 210 Lounge in McMurdo Station. Here are photos from previous Santarctica events.

Santarctica began in 2003 when a certain Santa was on his way to perform his yearly duty, and some unruly elves hijacked his sleigh, took a wrong turn, and diverted his path to McMurdo Station. Since then, Santas have been spotted making coffee, slicing ham, serving up beverages, driving heavy equipment, directing planes, and conducting science.

Sandwich describes the event as “The largest congregation of Santas the furthest from the North Pole”.

See Previously: Santarctica 2006

BrodyQat made another appearance as Desaturated Santa this year at San Francisco Santacon.

Here’s her original Desaturated Santa last year at San Francisco Santacon 2009.

UPDATE: Mark Day shot some great video of Desaturated Santa at Santacon 2010.

[via reddit]

photo by BrodyQat

Santacon 2010 events are currently being planned around the world for this year’s December Santarchy invasion.

photo by Jeff Mawer

The Singularity Institute presents The Singularity Summit 2010, a conference that explores the impact of science and technology on society. It takes place August 14-15 at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.

The first Singularity Summit was held at Stanford in 2006 to further understanding and discussion about the Singularity concept and the future of human technological progress. It was founded as a venue for leading thinkers to explore the subject, whether scientist, enthusiast, or skeptic. The goal of the Summit is to improve people’s thinking about the future and increasing public awareness of radical technologies under development today and of the transformative implications of such technologies understood as part of a larger process.

photo by unknown

During Santarchy Okinawa 2009 the Santas posed for a photo in front of the giant squid display at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in honor of Laughing Squid.

Thanks Santa! What a wonderful Christmas gift.

photo by Green Kozi

photo by Ed Hunsinger

On December 12th Santa’s Defense Forces, including the 12th Nutcracker Regiment, were deployed to San Francisco during the annual Santacon event to provide ceremonial and combat support to the Santa as part of Operation Yule Storm.

A Christmas expeditionary force of elite North Pole units has struck San Francisco. No loss of life was reported though a number of witnesses described forced gifting and mild to moderate kidnapping by fairy operators and nutcracker soldiers.

Here’s the full mission report for Operation Yule Storm.

UPDATE: Ed Hunsinger, who was part of the embedded press corp, has posted his recap of event.

photo by BrodyQat

photo by Andy Thomas

By far one of the most creative Santarchy outfit modifications I’ve seen in a while is Desaturated Santa, a monochrome Santa who was spotted at last Saturday’s San Francisco Santacon 2009 that looks like she was run through a Photoshop filter.

via The Daily What

photo by Scott Beale

Mitch Aidelbaum has posted a fantastic series of photos from San Francisco Santacon 2009. Check out the Santacon San Francisco 2009 Flickr group for more photos.

photo by John Curley

Santacon 2009 events are currently being planned around the world this December as Christmas approaches. Over on santarchy.com I’ve been actively tracking the cities currently being targeted for Santarchy invasions.

To get a better idea of what Santarchy is all about, here’s my 40 minute documentary on the 1996 Santacon in Portland “You’d Better Watch Out: Portland Santacon ’96″.

photo by Ed Hunsinger

Santa’s Little Secret Service took a slight break from protecting the jolly old man, jesus and Frank Chu mobilized for a special mission to protect the Easter Bunny while he visited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence 30th Anniversary Celebration. During the all-day tour, the Bunny was asked to leave the Cherry Blossom Festival, rode down Lombard Street, and finished the day with at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence 30th Anniversary. The Bunny joined the Sisters on stage in front of 10,000 onlookers, and led the Sisters parade, complete with police escort, to their street party on Noe.

Upon special request by the Office of the Santa, the protective mission of Santa’s Little Secret Service extends to other Pagan-Christian holiday VIPs. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny have maintained close diplomatic relations ever since the Constantinople Incident of 321 AD. In light of this longstanding cooperation, the Office of the Santa once again asked the Service to protect the Easter Bunny (codename COTTONTAIL) during its Easter Sunday visit to San Francisco. The mission codename: Operation Enduring Cottontail.

Good thing that they were there, otherwise Zombie Jesus might have attacked!

First Bacardi ripped-off The Cacophony Society’s Breakers to Bay Salmon Run, then Absolut Vodka co-opted the Pillow Fight and now the latest underground event used as the theme of a television commercial is Santacon (Santarchy) with Motorola’s new “Santa Swarm” ad for their bluetooth headsets.

The ad was produced for Motorola by creative agency DraftFCB working with the production company Harold Group. It was directed by Jamin Winans who made the really cool short film “Spin” that I posted about last year.

Thanks to Spacemonkey for the tip!

Geek Entertainment TV has posted their coverage of San Francisco Santacon 2008.

Last weekend at Santacon in San Francisco, Santa’s Little Secret Service was hard at work protecting luminaries like Jesus Christ and Frank Chu.

E. D. W. Lynch has some background info on the Santa’s Little Secret Service which was first deployed during Santacon 2006.

More photos can be found in the Santa’s Little Secret Service Flickr group.

photo by Mitchell Aidelbaum, E. D. W. Lynch & gastronomicdiva06

Photos are starting to come in from this year’s massive San Francisco Santacon. For more Santacon coverage around the world, check out the Santacon 2008 list of cities on Santarchy.

- Geek Entertainment TV (GETV)

- The San Francisco Citizen

- SFist

- The Snitch (SF Weekly)

- Santa’s Little Secret Service

- Eddie Codel

- Mitchell Aidelbaum

- Berderp

- M2

- Steve Rhodes

- Sandwich Girl

- Enric Teller

- Stephen

- Joe

- Santa Spaz

- SeenyaRita

- Jen Fogg

- Kevco

- Aaron

- James Reffell

- Grodeen

- Jennifer Simpson

- Lisa Sculati

If you know of any other San Francisco Santacon photos, video, blog posts or media coverage, leave a link in the comments.

This year’s San Francisco Santacon takes place on Saturday, December 13th. Stay tuned to the SF Bay Area Sanarchy blog and subscribe to @sfsanta on Twitter for the latest news and updates on the event.

I’ve uploaded an updated version of the Santacon Carol Book to the Santarchy website, which you can download, print out and bring along with you during this weekend’s naughty Noel mayhem.

For more info the other Santacons being planned around the world this year, check out the full list of Santacon 2008 cities.

See Previously: Santacon 2008, Global Santarchy Invasion Planned For December

photo by John Curley

April Baer of Oregon Public Broadcasting did an pre-event story on this year’s Portland Santacon for NPR’s All Things Considered. You can listen to it here.

See Previously:

- Santacon 2008, Global Santarchy Invasion Planned For December

- You’d Better Watch Out: Portland Santacon ’96

photo by ohhh_yeah808

Thanks to Santa Yankee Pants for the tip!

Santacon 2008 events are currently being planned around the world in December as Christmas approaches. Over on santarchy.com I’ve been actively tracking the cities currently being targeted for Santarchy invasions.

To get a better idea of what Santarchy is all about, here’s my 40 minute documentary on the 1996 Santacon in Portland “You’d Better Watch Out: Portland Santacon ’96″.