During the Christmas season in 1974, the radical Danish Solvognen theatre group held several days of events dressed as Santas, culminating in a near riot in a Copenhagen department store. Against a background of an unemployment crisis, groups of Santas went around on roller skates, others attacked state buildings with pitchforks, others visited the elderly in nursing homes and visited children in schools and passed out people’s history books.
The events climaxed when the Santa Claus Army entered the Magasin department store and began passing out gifts from the store’s shelves for free to shoppers, saying “Merry Christmas! Today, no one has to pay”. They justified their actions saying they were returning gifts to the workers who had made them. When police arrived and began arresting the Santas, the children who had been watching started crying.
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