12 Days of Christmas -some of my favourite pictures from those I made in July 2025.
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Christmas Walks. For many years we have had a family get-together on Boxing Day and we will do the same today, but it will be a little different as for the first time for many years we will not be walking the five or six miles to it.
We always needed that walk to work up enough appetite for a large meal in the middle of the day after a little overindulgence on Christmas Day. I’ve posted some pictures from our Boxing Day walks here in previous years, But as we got a little older they became simply a matter of the shortest route- a pleasant stroll along the Thames Path rather than any of the slightly longer and hillier variations that use to add interest.
And in late 2023 the Environment Agency found an unsafe 90 year old footbridge across a small creek close to Runnymede Bridge and fenced of this short section of the Thames Path in February 2024. Almost two years later it remains fenced off with work yet to start. The diversion isn’t a great deal longer but makes the walk less interesting.
We’d also go out on at least one walk between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day on a longer walk with whichever of our family were staying with us. But now our house seems to have shrunk as our children’s families have grown and we go away to stay with or near them. But I think we will still make some walks.
In 2019 we made three walks between Christmas Day and the New Year and I posted about all three on My London Diary.
The first, our walk on Boxing Day 2019 from Staines to lunch in Old Windsor was cut a little short, not by the Environment Agency but by the weather. We made it roughly two-thirds of the way to the café at Runnymede when the heavens opened – and we rang to be collected.
The second walk, two days later, followed an invitation on the Christmas card from the father of my younger son’s wife to join a walk he was arranging from Wimbledon across the common and through Richmond Park. We hadn’t intended to go, but it was a fine day and we decided at the last minute to join them, though we had to leave before the lunch they had planned at the café in Richmond Park.
More at Wimbledon to Richmond
The next day we took the trains to briefly visit my elder son and family in Milton Keynes and from there were driven up to Matlock by my younger son to stay with them for a couple of days. And the next day we walked what was described by one sensationalist article in a tabloid newspaper as the “most dangerous footpath in England” around the face of High Tor to Matlock Bath.
Of course it is no more dangerous than many other paths on cliffs around the country – and even has a handrail to hold on the narrowest section, as well as a short ‘one-way’ section to reduce the risk where passing others could be dangerous.
Matlock Bath is in parts tourist hell, full of fish and chips and ice cream shops, and a mecca for bikers, but it does have at least one decent pub – where we ate and went to look at some very large specimen fish before visiting the Mining Museum.
Coming out, I and my younger son started to climb up the hill on the west side of the valley while the rest of our party decided to take the short train journey back to Matlock. The climb of the valley was steep and exhausting, but once we had reached the top it was fairly easy going, with more great views at times of the Derwent valley as the light was beginning to fade.
By the time we reached Matlock I was thinking I should have taken the train.
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DLR – Connaught Rd & Bow Creek 1994. Continuing my panoramic images made along the path of the DLR in July 1994.
The road layout in this area has changed completely since 1994, but you can see at right the DLR Beckton branch going over the concrete lead-up to the Connaught Bridge. I think GATE 30 at extreme left is to the Excel site and the Connaught Tavern is hidden by the trees in the centre of the picture – and so this road was the old Connaught Road which led to the old swing bridge. I think where I was standing is now the middle of a hotel car park.
I moved around a mile and a half west and four stops along the DLR line to Canning Town and one of my favourite areas around Bow Creek, which here does two more or less 180 degree turns before flowing into the Thames. These two ‘bridges’ are a few yards south of East India Dock Road and I think both were built as pipe bridges to carry gas across the river.
Only the brick end supports of first remain on each bank. The metal bridge in the centre of the image is also a footbridge, now painted blue and leading across the river to the ecology park. Just beyond it, almost completely hidden is a third bridge, a long disused rail bridge. At left are the sheds of a timber yard.
Further East on the East India Dock Road I made this panorama with a sawmill in Wharfdale Road. Beyond that road is a train on the DLR line, and over the top of this you can see the Pura Foods factory on the site where London City Island now is.
A few yards further east on East India Dock Road gave this view of Bow Creek, curving 180 degrees around Pura Foods. Locals were pleased to see this London City Island factory go as you could smell it across much of Canning Town.
And a similar view but including a DLR train.
A few yards away I used a crane to frame the image of Pura Foods on its not quite island site. At right of the picture is a bridge across the DLR leading to a riverside walk to Canning Town Station. Although I managed to walk across Reuben’s Bridge several times, it has been mainly locked for the last thirty years, despite being a useful short cut to the riverside station entrance.
Apparently it was closed because people were throwing stones from it onto the DLR, and more recently in 2019 a survey determined that it is non-compliant with current Health & Safety Legislation, Building Regulations, British Standards and associated supplementary guidance.
The initial plans were for the riverside walkway to lead all the way to Trinity Buoy Wharf at the mouth of Bow Creek – and a competition was held and awarded for a new footbridge to enable this – but then the plans were dropped. Until a new bridge was built for London City Island the riverside entrance to Canning Town station only led to two dead ends.
More to come.
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Scrooge Debenhams & Bikelife: Striking cleaners in the Independent Workers Union – CAIWU – protest outside Debenhams in Oxford Street with a noisy rally on Saturday 22nd December 2018, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. While I was there a large group of boys and young men on bikes rode past, some pulling wheelies.
Oxford St
The workers who clean the Debenhams store were not employed by them but are outsourced, working forInterserve, a company who have the cleaning contract with Debenhams.
Interserve are lousy employers, treating the cleaners badly and paying the minimum legal wage and conditions, interested only in making as much as they can for their owners or shareholders. The minimum wage isn’t enough to live on in London and reputable employers pay workers at least the London Living Wage – an amount determined every year and roughly 30% above the legal minimum.
The workers belong to the Cleaners & Allied Independent Workers Union, CAIWU, but Interserve refuses to recognise the union or to have any talks with them about their claim for the London Living Wage. CAIWU is one of several small grassroots trade unions which has been very successful in getting better pay and condition for low paid workers.
Reputable companies such as Debenhams would be ashamed to pay their workers so little or treat them so badly and by using companies like Interserve they claim they have no responibilty for the people who work inside their shops to keep them clean.
Many of the shoppers walking by took leaflets and showed support for the cleaners and were surprised that Debenhams could legally evade their responsibilities to the workers in this way.
The cleaners had begun their picket in the early morning and were still protesting when I had to leave.
Oxford St
While I was outside Debenhams a group of several hundred mainly boys and young men rode past on bicycles, some balancing just on the rear wheel of their bikes. They were obviously having fun but it looked rather dangerous as they wove in and out of traffic.
I had heard there was going to be some sort of bike ride in London that day, but could not find any of the details in advance. And when it did arrive it came as a surprise and I didn’t have time to think about my camera settings but took the pictures at the same ISO and shutter speed as I had been using for the protest on the pavement – which meant many of my pictures were blurred and unusable.
I didn’t have time to choose a different position either, though I think the yellow ‘bananas’ bus was quite appropriate.
Later I found that these ‘UK Bike Life Wheelie Rides’ begin somewhere south of the river perhaps at Tower Bridge, Druid St or Leake St, around lunchtime. They have fun swarming around the city, showing off with wheelies, stopping traffic, riding on pavements as well as roads, ignoring traffic lights, forcing drivers to stop and generally behaving badly on bikes. Several missed me by inches as they sped past while I was taking pictures.
Some certainly displayed an impressive degree of skill, but it still seemed dangerous both to themselves and to other road users and pedestrians – and an activity that gives cycling a bad name.
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Christmas Decorations: Twenty-two years ago I was younger and fitter and my doctor had told me to take plenty of exercise, which for me meant riding a bike. On one of these rides at the start of December I came across a house which had been decorated for Christmas and took a quick snap with the little Canon Ixus which was always in my pocket. I decided it would be an interesting project to photograph, particularly at night. I posted on a CIX photography forum asking for information about where there were houses worth photographing, but found a few others myself.
The Ixus wasn’t really up to this – as I wrote then, “they are .. very difficult to photograph well. In full darkness the contrast between the lights and the rest of the scene is too high. If you want to take pictures, then try and do so at twilight, when there is still enough light around to see clearly. The lupine hour is the best time for most ‘night’ photography.” There were just a few where I found a little flash could help but more often it ruined the effect.
During December 2003 I loaded the bag on my Brompton with my 6Mp Nikon D100, the first really affordable digital SLR and tied on a large Manfrotto tripod and either rode from home or went by train to various areas of London, riding around an taking photographs in late afternoon or early evening.
And of course I posted some of the pictures on My London Diary and wrote a piece about Christmas and the pictures – which is below- with minor corrections.
Christmas is on its way, and houses all over Britain are beginning to display the signs, some more tastefully than others. Some I’ve found are rather impressive, others I find amusing, but your opinions may well differ.
Christmas has almost completely lost the connection it had to the nativity, and the ‘Christmas Story’ is now one of cash registers and a Santa Claus who owes as much to advertising as to Saint Nicholas.
Originally of course this was a pagan festival from over 4000 years ago, the feast of the Goddess of Nature, an occasion for drinking, gluttony and gifts, so perhaps we really are getting down to our roots for once. Many celebrations, especially those for Yule (the ‘wheel’ or sun) were on the Winter Solstice – the shortest daylight, usually on Dec 21 or 22, when the rebirth of the sun was celebrated.
Pope Julius I decided it would be a good idea for Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25 back in 350AD, so that Christians could go on celebrating yule and not feel bad about it, celebrating the birth of the Son of God while others were celebrating the birth of the sun. Though Christmas as we knew it only came in around the 1500s in Germany, many of its customs only really coming here when Victoria married Albert.
Our modern picture of Santa developed in the USA in the mid nineteenth century, particularly in the drawings of Thomas Nast for ‘Harpers’ magazine, and the jovial fat bearded man in red and white was well-established before Haddon Sundbloom annexed him for his fantastically successful coke adverts. Although Coke didn’t invent Santa, it was largely the power of their advertising that sold him to the world.
These decorated houses, often an attempt to go one better than the Joneses, have become an urban folk art. One of the glories of folk art is that it is seldom polite or tasteful, sometimes incredibly kitsch and over the top. Despite my misgivings on grounds of religion, ecology, upbringing and reserve I love them. at the very least they add a little colour to our lives.
Ruislip, Eastcote and West Drayton
The 15th was a glorious December day, cold but with a clear blue sky and sun. I took the Brompton on the train to Angel Road, then spent a couple of hours around there before heading north to Ponders End, further up the Lea Valley. around here there are still some of many industries that once filled much of the lower lea.
As it got dark I went to Enfield, in search of some houses I’d been told about, then on to North Tottenham and New Southgate and finally West Finchley. Somewhere I tried to cycle where the council had left a flower bed in the pavement and went flying, with rather painful results, but fortunately I don’t seem to have broken anything.
The weather was still good a couple of days later as I reached Rotherhithe in late afternoon, with a post-sunset glow along the Thames. Much of the Surrey Docks redevelopment seems sadly suburban and the new riverside flats depress by their lack of imagination, but there are some fine views along the river: even Canary Wharf can look good from a distance.
Here were a couple more houses with Christmas decorations worth photographing, before I leapt onto the east london line to new cross. Unfortunately there diddn’t seem to be any trains running to Hither Green from there (despite the timetable) but it was only a couple of miles to cycle.
The lights in Newstead Road are perhaps the most impressive of any I’ve seen, but I can’t really find a good way to photograph them, and there are too many people around. Apparently last year they raised £3000 for charity.
Back on my bike to the station, train to Waterloo and then another to Raynes Park and a cycle down Grand Drive to Lower Morden Lane, with fingers cold because I lost a glove on the way to Rotherhithe. This street is impressive for the number of houses with decorations, and the queue of cars driving slowly past to admire them. but none of them are really exceptional, and there wasn’t a lot to photograph.
So its back on the Brompton to Raynes Park and a couple of trains home. It was great to come in and find a hot dinner in the oven waiting for me.
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Around Finsbury Park: On Sunday February 25th 1990 I began a walk from Finsbury Park Station
The Bookmarks shop was at 265, Seven Sisters Rd, Finsbury Park and was home to the Bookmarks Publishing Co-operative which had been established in 1979 to publish books and pamphlets by members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 1998 it moved to 1 Bloomsbury Street and is now Britain’s largest socialist bookshop and now sells a wide range of “non-fictional and fictional books that concern politics, economics, anti-fascism, anarchism, labour history, trade unionism, arts and culture, anti-racism, the environment, biographies, and feminism.”
Two doors beyond this at 269 was the former entrance to a cinema, built in 1909 as Pyke’s Cinematograph. Later it was combined with the larger Rink Cinema behind it at 10 Stroud Green Road and when I took this picture it had closed as a club and became as a large sign indicates ‘LONDON’S LATEST LUXURY TENPIN BOWLING ALLEY!’ with its entrance in Stroud Green Road around the corner. There is now a Lidl here.
After the railway station – at first Seven Sisters Road station – opened in 1869 the area around it was opened up to speculative building, with trains taking workers into the City at Moorgate station in around 15 minutes. This very substantial Victorian detached house was one of those on Queen’s Drive, just a few yards from Finsbury Park and a short walk to the station which would have provided a home for a well-paid city worker and his family and a servant or two.
Further down Queen’s Drive were more very substantial semi-detached residences and although much of the area had deteriorated particularly since the war these houses still seemed in good condition. This was clearly built as one of the posher streets in Finsbury Park and had remained so, although many of these large houses were now dividied into flats and some had been replaced by later and larger blocks of flats.
A strikingly vertical house on the corner of Brownswood Road and Wilberforce Rd, though in fact is I think actually only the same height as the house opposite, also with a full height attic window. There are similar houses on all four corners of the junction. The large block of flats looks very near but is on Citizen Road around a kilometre away to the south-west.
Two adjoining doors of 63 and 65 St Thomas’s Road both have notices on them from the squatters, on the left door warning that the premises are occupied and that any attempt to enter without permission is a criminal act, while on the right visitors are told they need to knock and shout up up to people on the upper floors. Squatting in a residential building in England only became illegal in September 2012.
YOUR LAST CHANCE TO STOP THE ROADS states a poster for a march from Kings Cross to Archway on 24 February 1990, the day before I took this picture. In 1989 Margaret Thatcher had outlined plans for a £23 billion trunk road enlargement programme in the Roads for Prosperity white paper, designed to assist economic growth, improve the environment, and improve road safety. It led to years of protest with many schemes being cancelled though others, including the M3 extension at Twyford Down, the Newbury bypass and the M11 link road went ahead.
To be continued
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Panoramas Around Albert & Victoria Docks: More panoramas I made in July 1994 on and around the Beckton Extension of the DLR, getting off the train at each stop, taking a walk around and making a few pictures before boarding the train again
One of the few pictures I made with a deliberate tilt of the camera in order to get the whole circle of the roundabout in the image. As you can see this results in a curved horizon.
The DLR stations on the elevated line often provided a useful viewpoint. Along the horizon here at left you can see the church at Silvertown, then the Silvertown Flyover. Around the centre are the mills on Royal Victoria Dock, then the more distant Canary Wharf and past that the Grade II listed 1881 Connaught Tavern. At right is the Compressor House, built in 1914 as a cold store for the dock.
A view through the front window of a DLR train which shows the Compressor House next to the Royal Albert Dock Station and the long stretch of the Royal Albert Dock. At the left are the houses of West Beckton. At right is London City Airport with a couple of planes.
A view from the side of the train as it goes across Connaught Road looking over the recently built cable stayed swing bridge with reinforced concrete approach viaducts, opened around 1990. It replaced an earlier swing bridge built in 1904 to carry both the road and the North Woolwich Railway across the Connaught Passage between the Royal Victoria and Royal Albert Docks. The small octagonal building to the left of the bridge pumps water from the Connaught Tunnel, originally by hydraulic pumps but now by electric pumps. This was replaced by a larger circular structure when the tunnel was rebuilt for the Crossrail.
The DLR line runs beside Victoria Dock Road and this picture was made from Custom House Station and shows the junction with Freemasons Rd. Further along Victoria Dock Road you can see The Missions to Seaman Institute, Flying Angel House, built in red-brick Art Deco style in 1936. It closed in 1973 and after being used for some time as a college was converted into flats.
The western end of Royal Victoria Dock which closed in 1981. This picture was taken roughlky from where the cable car ride now has its northern terminal. The dockside sheds have been replaced by tall waterside blocks – around 17 storeys. There are still some of the old cranes on the quayside.
More panoramas from 1994 to follow.
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Lammas Lands, Leyton, Columbia Market & Bethnal Green: On Sunday 17th December 2006 I went to an event by local residents seeking to protect the Leyton Lammas Lands from the sprawling London 2012 Olympics before going to a meeting with a friend at Columbia Market. Unfortunately on my way there I got a phone call telling me he was unable to make it, so I took a few pictures there before walking on in a roundabout way to visit another friend in Bethnal Green. Below I’ll post what I wrote back in 2006 (with minor corrections) and some of the pictures from that day.
Leyton Lammas Lands, Marsh Lane, Leyton
History seems about to repeat itself in Leyton, although the outcome may be different this time. It was in 894 that King Alfred drained Leyton Marsh and gave the local people the right to graze their animals on the Lammas Land created. (Details in this post come from a leaflet written by Lorraine Metherall and Neil Bedford, published by the New Lammas Lands Defence Committee (NLLDC) and from Martin Slavin’s Games Monitor web site – now archived here.)
In the 1890s, the East London Waterworks Company tried to take over the Lammas Lands, and on Lammas Day, 1st August 1892, a large demonstration met on the marshes and ripped up their fences. The company tried to sue one of the people involved, and locals set up the ‘Leyton Lammas Lands Defence Committee‘ (LLLDC) and fought the case in court. The water company ended up admitting defeat, paying all costs and giving money for a local essay prize.
The efforts of the LLLDC led to the ‘1904 Leyton Urban District Council Act‘, in which parliament vested the lands in the council, making them responsible for maintaining them as “an open space for the perpetual use therof for exercise and recreation…”. The act made them a permanent public open space in return for the giving up of the lammas rights, and was confirmed by parliament in 1965.
Over the years parts of the land have been taken for other uses, including railway sidings, Gas Board land and, more recently, the Lea Valley Riding School and Ice Rink. When the Lea Valley Regional Park acquired most of the Lammas Lands by compulsory purchase in 1971, they for some reason felt able to ignore the 1904 act, and have blocked public access to some areas.
The latest threat to Leyton Lammas Lands come from the London Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA). Although outside the Olympic area, the Lammas Lands are a handy place to dump the unwanted, in this case the allotment holders of Manor Gardens. In the late 1880s the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared at Eton College and prompted them to set up a charitable settlement in Hackney. The Eton Manor Settlement bought up land, including lammas land in Hackney and Leyton and set up various sports clubs and related activities including the Manor Garden Allotments.
Although the ODA is apparently set on jettisoning inconvenient requirements that were a part of its original agreement – such as the need to replace common land – it apparently still has to re-site the allotments, and its preferred site is on Marsh Lane, part of the Leyton Lammas Lands. Unfortunately the current land is unsuitable, being heavily polluted with a relatively thin layer of topsoil on top of wartime rubble.
Making them usable means removal of some existing soil and bringing in many lorry loads of new topsoil, probably half a metre over the whole site. This would mean an new vehicle access to Marsh Lane, bringing traffic the few yards from Orient Way, along with widening Marsh Lane with the loss of some of the fine avenue of trees currently on both sides. This would also need to stay open for the use of the allotment holders, and would almost certainly result in the newly widened Marsh Lane becoming a heavily trafficked short cut to Church Road.
The ODA needs the support of the local council for their application, and the NLLDC hope to raise enough local support to make them think again. It is of course possible that the courts could be asked to ensure that the provisions of the 1904 act are enforced.
[The Manor Gardens allotments were moved here in 2007 but the site allocated was in very poor condition. The ODA reneged on its promise to return them to their original site – but eventually in 2016 they were given a new site – only one fifth the area of their original site – on Pudding Mill Lane. This is now under threat from more and more tall buildings around it blocking out the sun.]
A few more pictures from Leyton.
I was in the East End partly to meet a mate at Columbia Market, but in the end he couldn’t make it. With Christmas just over a week to go, prices were high. I calculated we’d just sent several hundred pounds worth of eucalyptus twigs to the incinerator after I did a bit of pruning recently, and those three holly trees in the back garden would be a goldmine. Strangely, even at these prices, some people seemed to be buying the stuff, though by the end of they day there did seem to be quite a lot of plants being loaded back into the lorries, and there were certainly plenty of Christmas Untrees left.
Real trees of course have roots, and we always get one that has them, and grow it on for a few years between January and December. A few die off, and others eventually get too big to get through the door, and there are three that would suit Trafalgar Square down the garden. [Two huge and still growing but I had to fell one of them a few years ago.]
A few more images – including the Christmas Tree machine
I took a few snaps, and then wandered through Hackney and Bethnal Green on my way to visit another friend who had written a book, The Romance of Bethnal Green, on the area and is using some of my pictures, to take a look at the design.
There was some nice light on some of the streets and buildings, and Queen Adelaide’s head curiously lit up as I passed.
More pictures from Hackney and Bethnal Green
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Dancers, Shops, Gym, Laundry, a Lab and Cobblers: The next set of pictures from my walk on February 18th 1990 around Kings Cross & St Pancras. The previous post on this was St Pancras Old Church & More – 1990.
This was my favourite mural in London on the side of Stanley buildings and one I’d photographed several times since 1985. Unusually it was painted in black and white and it extended across the whole side of the flats from first floor level to the chimneys. You can see an image in colour I made a few months earlier from a similar viewpoint on Flickr.
Nearby on Pancras Road I photographed this rather finely proportioned frontage with some interesting brickwork and decoration at its top. I wish I had made another exposure to show more clearly the two busts at the left of the ground floor.
Another image of the Pancras Road frontage of the German Gymnasium in a row of shops including the St Pancras Cafe. All this was lost for the redevelopment of St Pancras International – with the Gymnasium being given a new modern frontage in a style matching the rest of the building.
To the east of Kings Cross the first turning to the right from York Way is Caledonia Street. I’d photographed the laundry with its large intertwined KCL insignia on a walk the previous year. Although there were more recent signs for occupiers including those for Lanitis Fabrics Ltd, and Stella Models and signs calling for Machinists, Overlockers, Pressers, Finishers and Cutters, the building appeared to be no longer in use.
The building is still there, though all of the sings apart from the ‘KCL’ have gone and it is now offices with a gateway leading into the ‘Regent Quarter’ redevelopment.
A little further to the north is Wharfdale Road, another right turning from York Way and from that New Wharf Road goes to the north. These two roads are on the south and east of the ‘new wharf’, Battlebridge Basin on the Regent’s Canal, serving the wharves around its sides.
A large notice on the lefthand buildin, formerly MAMMA ROMA, advertises the development of Battlebridge Basin with 3 buildings with planning consent for offices.
The next building on the road was the then derelict Ozonol Laboratories, Manufacturing Chemists. In 1932 the company had patented a product for “disinfecting mouthpieces of telephones, speaking tubes and the like” and similar products mainly under the similar names: “Ozonol”, “Ozlab”, “Oztox” and others were marketed for use in air purifiers and as an ointment for treating sunburn and hemorrhoids and a wide range of other uses. Ozonol ointments are still sold in some countries though probably not containing some of the original components such as lead oxide.
I walked through to Caledonian Road where I photographed through the window of this cobblers shop with its phone, hand-made sign, electric fire and general clutter. It looked then like something out of an earlier age.
It was time to go home, and I walked back to the tube at Kings Cross.
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Santacon Comes to Town: On Saturday 15th December 2015 hundreds of santas, some elves, the odd reindeer and a few others converged on Trafalgar Square at the end of the annual Santacon event.
Santacon described itself as “a non-profit, non-political, non-religious and non-sensical Christmas parade“, though that makes it sound rather more organised than it is, with hundreds roaming the streets with their friends, largely sticking to routes from various starting points published shortly before the event and indulging in a considerable amount of festive drinking.
“Most of those taking part were young, in their teens or twenties, but there were a few older participants, although most of the beards on show were profuse, white and fake, as well as some younger children and at least one baby elf.”
Police don’t like it, I think mainly because it interferes with the great god of traffic as santas often spill across roads though they probably call it “inconvenience to the public”. But the great majority of the public seem to be amused and welcome the spectacle. And some even join in the festivities.
One particularly controversial aspect has been the friendly rivalry between elves and santas which erupts into battles between the two groups pelting each other with Brussels sprouts. It’s something firmly deprecated by both Santacon organisers and police, but elves will be elves.
It would be unusual for a Brussels sprout to inflict any real damage – I was hit be several while taking these pictures, but it does seem rather a waste of my favourite Christmas vegetable.
Santacon in London seemed to reach a peak around 2010, though I think I last photographed it in 2018. The date for 2025, announced only at the last minute, was December 6th, but I didn’t go.
The conclusion to my 2012 post included a snippet of history: “The first mass event with people in Santa costumes began with a street theatre group in Copenhagen in 1974, but the event took off in the USA in the 1990s and has spread to cities across the world. Some of those taking part see it as a protest against the commercialisation of Christmas, but for most it’s simply a fun day out in the city drinking on the street with friends.”
Many more pictures of santas of both sexes at Santacon Comes to Town.
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