Burning of Zozobra
When:
September 4, 2026
Where:
490 Bishops Lodge Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501, United States
Official Website:
https://burnzozobra.com/
Image by:
Image by Ronald Douglas Frazier, CC BY 2.0.
Every year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a towering 50-foot marionette named Zozobra—also known as “Old Man Gloom”—is set ablaze in a spectacular event that draws over 60,000 attendees and countless online viewers. This fiery tradition, initiated in 1924 by artist William Howard Shuster Jr., serves as a communal purging of anxieties and troubles, with participants contributing their personal “glooms”—such as divorce papers or parking tickets—to be incinerated along with the effigy.
