The Atlas Obscura Podcast The Burning of Zozobra!
Oct 15, 2025
Ray Sandoval, organizer of the Burning of Zozobra festival, shares the magic behind Santa Fe's unique tradition. He describes the creation of a giant, 50-foot marionette stuffed with community-submitted worries, known as 'glooms.' The festival serves as a cathartic ritual where 50,000 attendees burn Zozobra to release their anxieties. Ray recounts its evolution from a backyard event in the 1920s to a grand spectacle featuring fireworks and performances. Learn how the festival embodies a profound duality: confronting gloom while celebrating community spirit.
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Communal Stuffing Party
- Hundreds of volunteers come to a mall to stuff Zozobra with shredded paper during a community pizza-party event.
- Ray Sandoval describes lines forming and the puppet fully stuffed by early afternoon.
The Table Fire That Sparked Zozobra
- Will Schuster wrote others' complaints on paper, burned them at a restaurant table, and was kicked out by the bartender.
- He then developed the idea to burn a communal effigy in the plaza during snow.
Ritual Born From Cathartic Arson
- Will Schuster created Zozobra as a ritual to burn away personal gloom after a spontaneous table-burning in a hotel.
- The effigy grew from a 5-foot puppet in 1924 into an annual public catharsis.