UPDATE: SantaCon Will Not Necessarily Start in Williamsburg This Year, Bro

UPDATE, Oct. 26, 4:30 p.m.: A source within SantaCon's core group of organizers said he and his cohorts were very amused, yesterday, to see Gothamist report — and a whole host of TV news stations in NYC re-report – that the annual SantaCon festival would be starting in Williamsburg this year, for the second year in a row. Gothamist writer Ben Yakas apparently gleaned this info from the SantaCon website, our source said, without noticing it was a year old. This is not to say that Williamsburg as a whole is out of the running as a starting point for the 2016 event — but according to our source, the particular spot in McCarren Park where all the Santas gathered in 2015 is a no-go. "We never repeat start points," he said. For the record, Team SantaCon appears to be enjoying this whole circular-sourcing mess quite a bit: "The Gothamist dude saw an opportunity for early snark and took it without thinking things through.. we do love a good misdirect though so we didn't correct him," our source said. To stay updated on the SantaCon 2016 route when it's ready for real, follow the festival's official Twitter account and/or sign up for email alerts from your friendly neighborhood Patch editor. We got you, bro.

Original story below.

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKYLN — Love it or hate it or love to hate it, New York City's annual SantaCon festival and bar crawl, in which thousands of spirited folks in Santa costumes get day-drunk in the streets and pubs of the city, doesn't appear to be going anywhere. And its 10 a.m. starting blocks for this year's event on Dec. 10, according to widespread reports (Gothamist, NBC, NY1, etc.), will for the second year be located in Williamsburg instead of the East Village.

We've reached out to SantaCon organizers for confirmation; check back for updates.

But from the SantaCon Route 2016 news processing cycle we've observed thus far, no one really seems to care — and thus the once-apocalyptic Williamsburg-to-East Village transformation has been normalized.

Lead photo by Brian Pennington/Flickr