For 100 Years, Santa Feans Have Burned New Mexico’s Boogeyman in a ‘Sacred Rite of Purification, Laughter and Rebirth’

Each year, thousands of people gather at Santa Fe’s Fort Marcy Park on the Friday of Labor Day weekend to face their proverbial archnemesis, a 50-foot-tall effigy known as New Mexico’s “Boogeyman” or “Old Man Gloom.” As the villain makes one final attempt to heap sorrow on the city, plunging it into total darkness, revelers take their cue to commence their fiery revenge.

“Burn him! Burn him!” they chant to the embodiment of their anguish, writhing and howling as they cheer his flaming demise.

It’s the annual Burning of Zozobra (pronounced “zuh-ZOH-bruh”), a cultural tradition held sacred to Santa Feans since its inception in 1924. A name meaning “anxiety” in Spanish, Zozobra is staged annually by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe to mark the end of summer and kick off Fiesta de Santa Fe, a nine-day celebration of the city’s Spanish heritage. This year’s event on Friday, August 30, marks the 100th burning.

A decades-long tradition for many New Mexicans, it epitomizes Santa Fe’s uniqueness. “To take a group of volunteers and spend basically an entire year planning, building and constructing this big 50-foot monster only to destroy it, that’s pretty City Different,” says Ray Sandoval, Zozobra event committee chair, referring to the city’s tagline.

Zozobra is also considered a sacred rite of renewal, says Judith Moir, event deputy. “It’s a time at which you can let go of everything that bothered you, everything that disappointed yourself or disappointed somebody else around you, and start fresh,” she says.

The spark for Zozobra came on Christmas Eve 1923, when local artist William Howard “Will” Shuster Jr., gathered Santa Fe’s first artist collective, known as Los Cinco Pintores (“the five painters”), for dinner at the newly opened La Fonda hotel to celebrate selling one of his paintings. But the friends seemed glum, so Shuster demanded they write their troubles on paper, which they then burned in a small tabletop bonfire to clear the negativity. (The restaurant staff kicked them out for…