Zozobra (also known as "Old Man Gloom") is a giant marionette effigy constructed of wood, wire and cotton cloth that is built and burned on the Friday of Labor Day weekend prior to the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. It stands 50 ft. 6 in. high.
The name is a Spanish word that refers to a strong feeling of anxiety or worries, and as its name suggests, the effigy embodies gloom and anxiety; by burning it, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames. Anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to write down the nature of their gloom on a slip of paper and leave it in the "gloom box" found in City of Santa Fe Visitors' Centers in the weeks leading up to the burn. Participants are also welcome to add their glooms at the annual ZozoFest, a festive precursor event that takes place the weekend before Zozobra burns. Those who attend the burning can also add documents at the venue on the day of the burning, up until 8 pm MT, at a "gloom tent," where they can add their woes to the marionette's stuffing. Legal papers, divorce documents, mortgage pay-offs, parking tickets, a Martin guitar and even a wedding dress –– have all found their way into Zozobra to go up in smoke. At the festival, glooms from the gloom box are placed inside Zozobra to be burned alongside it.
History
Fiestas de Santa Fe has been held since 1712 to celebrate the Spanish reconquest of the city in 1692 by Don Diego de Vargas from the Pueblo tribes who had occupied the city since the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The burning of Zozobra dates from 1924, when artist William Howard Shuster, Jr. crested and then burned the first Zozobra in his backyard at a party for his friends and fellow artists. "Zozobra" is a Spanish word for anxiety, worry, or sinking and was chosen by Shuster and newspaper editor E. Dana Johnson after a trip they made to Mexico. It is said that the idea was influenced by Mexican cartonería (papier-mâché sculpture), specifically the effigies exploded during the burning of Judas that takes place on Holy Saturday or New Year's Eve, as a way of ridding oneself or one's community of evil.
Modern celebration
Each year in Santa Fe New Mexico, over 60,000 people attend the event and hundreds of thousands watch online. The Labor Day Friday Burning of Zozobra is followed by a festive arts and crafts fair that launches the Santa Fe Fiesta over the Labor Day weekend. The following weekend welcomes the Santa Fe Fiesta Desfile de Los Niños, the Children's Pet Parade, on Saturday, the Hysterical-Historical Parade on Sunday, and a traditional mass at St. Francis Cathedral.
Since receiving all rights to the Zozobra pageant in 1964 from creator Will Shuster, the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe has built Zozobra and burned the effigy at Fort Marcy Park. The Zozobra that burned on September 7, 2007, was certified by Guinness World Records as the largest marionette in the world, at the time measuring in height.
The Burning of Zozobra was traditionally held in September, however, attendance at the event improved in 2014 when it was moved to the Friday immediately before Labor Day.