Fun, Weird, Labor Day Weekend Getaway In New Mexico

If you're looking for something fun and different to do this Labor Day Weekend, this New Mexico event is an easy drive from El Paso.

Santa Fe, New Mexico is about a 4.5 hour drive from El Paso. It's a beautiful, relatively small city that's home to the oldest state capitol in the country, the oldest house in the USA and only 25 miles from one of the holiest sites in the world. (Check 'em out below.)

It's also home to a very unique event that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Since 1924, on the Friday that starts Labor Day Weekend, peeps get together in Santa Fe to watch Zozobra "get lit". Who the hell is Zozobra, you ask?

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. - smithsonianmag.com

Shuster eventually combined his idea with a Yaqui Indian tradition that involved an effigy of Judas being led around the village and then burned. The original Zozobra, initially named “Old Man Groucher”, was abut 4 feet tall and burned in the backyard.

He grew from 4 feet, to 6 feet, to 20 feet, to 30, eventually topping out at 50 feet. People spend pretty much all year getting him ready to be burned at the stake to mark the end of summer and the beginning of the Fiesta De Santa Fe.

Basically, a really long, loud, weird, fun party followed by all that the Fiesta offers. Check out the video above and get a glimpse of this years "Big Z" below.