When you’re the people who booed Santa Claus, the world won’t let you forget it.
On Jan. 28, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni stood just one victory away from clinching the Philadelphia team’s 2023 berth in the Super Bowl.
A lone German reporter called out from the press scrum. He had just one question: What’s with all these “not so friendly” Eagles fans “throwing snowballs at the Santa?”
“Snowballs-at-Santa has become pure mythology, our Greek tragedy,” wrote Glen Macnow and Anthony Gargano in 2003’s “The Great Philadelphia Fan Book.”
Deservedly or not, booing Santa has become the defining fable of the Philadelphia sports fan, sometimes the city itself. In the words of center Jason Kelce after the Eagles’ 2018 Super Bowl victory: “No one likes us. We don’t care.”
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Perhaps you’ve heard the story. After a frigid and disastrous Eagles home game in December 1968, ABC Weekend Report’s Howard Cosell forsook the week’s usual highlights reel. Instead, he showed footage of unhappy Philadelphians pelting a halftime Santa with snowballs.
Cosell’s broadcast, and his scolding disbelief parroted by newspapers all over the country, helped turn Philadelphia sports fans into the stuff of infamy and legend.
In the years since, television media has made sidewalk sport out of Birds lovers, propping up the drunkest fans they can find in front of a camera, or airing out pole-climbing fans at citywide celebrations that can look like the nation’s happiest riot.
If you type “why are Eagles fans” into Google, the search engine’s autocomplete function helpfully suggests “so crazy,” “so annoying” and “the worst.”
But are Eagles fans really so rowdy? More notable than fans like the 49ers or Raiders, who’ve seen a tragic shooting and fight after fight? From his perch at friendly South Philly dive bar The Friendly Lounge — home to game-day potlucks featuring Italian meatballs or Vietnamese pho — Jersey-born Ryan Schamp said the idea Eagles fans are uniquely intense is an “undeserved narrative.”
“Eagles fans have done a few dumb things over the years,” Schamp conceded. But that’s not really how they are.
“They threw snowballs at Santa. They ate horse (poop),” he said, referencing a 2018 incident best left unwatched. “I think the things they do are memorable, but they are few and far between. … And I guess when you throw snowballs at Santa, it follows you for generations.”
The real story of Eagles fans booing Santa
Longtime Eagles quarterback Norm Snead was on the field the day the fans booed Santa. He didn’t think it was out of character.
“It didn’t surprise me,” the 83-year-old former Pro Bowler said now, from his home in Naples, Florida. “Because I knew how they were. I lived in South Philly. Kids would boo you on the street when you walked by if you played bad.”
They booed because they cared. Because they were loyal fans who didn’t hide how they felt.
“They’re vocal at games,” he said, “and they’re vocal on the streets.”
If he played well, those same kids would go running down the street to buy things for him at the corner store.
Snead is rooting for the Eagles, and “very talented” quarterback Jalen Hurts in particular, at the Super Bowl this year.
But in 1968, the Eagles didn’t play well.
They’d won only two games, just enough to miss out on O.J. Simpson as a draft pick. The day was miserably cold. The team blew its early lead against the Vikings.
Those fans didn’t just boo Santa. They booed everybody. They showered Eagles and Vikings players with snowballs, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1968, and they beaned the Eagles coach.
The “real” Santa Claus didn’t even show up; he was snowed in at home in Jersey. Organizers pulled a young fan named Frank Olivo out of the stands, already dressed up in a homemade Santa suit made of red corduroy.
Somewhat famously, the fans booed him, too.
Over the years, Olivo told reporters that he mostly thought the snowball incident was funny, but that he still “felt every boo.” He denied till the day he died that he was “scruffy” — the word later used by former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, then present in the stands — or drunk.
But in Philadelphia, legend makes villains of us all.
The particular passion of the Eagles fan
Schamp, the fan at Friendly Lounge, doesn’t believe Eagles fans are any more riled up than those in other sports cities. Santa is just an easy, lazy story that people won’t stop repeating.
Dreu McNeil, a “born and raised Eagles fan” two seats down, thought much the same. She said hometown sports unify the city, and “soothe the savage beast.” But she doesn’t think Eagles fans are wilder than others.
“I went to New Orleans,” she said. “I don’t think they had other clothes, except Saints clothing.”
There are some hard numbers on Philadelphia’s side. The Eagles weren’t even among the top 10 teams when it came to arrests at football stadiums, according to data collected by the Washington Post in 2016. Compared with any fan base in California or the part of North Jersey that calls itself New York, the Birds are pussycats.
But most Eagles fans we talked to brought up the same word to describe themselves: passion.
“Are Eagles fans as crazy as everyone says they are? Technically, yes. But they’re just passionate,” said a self-employed regular at South Philly Italian spot Stogie Joe’s, who identified himself as “Matty C-Notes.”
Eagles fans will always tell you how they feel, he said, even in another team’s stadium.
“An Eagles fan will go anywhere, in any state at any time, and you’re gonna get heckled whether it’s your state or not. That’s a fact,” he said.
Eagles fans aren’t usually trying to start fights, said New Castle Eagles fan Timothy Toner, who used to work at the Phillies stadium. They’re mostly just poking your ribs.
“Everyone wants to be known for their heckles. If you come across funny, then that absolves you of being a jerk,” he said. “If you get a laugh out of the guy … everything’s OK.”
South Jersey-born Greg Novakowski, who runs an Eagles fan page in Kansas City, discovered in his adopted hometown that Chiefs fans actually wait until they know you before they start talking trash.
But an Eagles fan? An Eagles fan will talk trash to a stranger, he said.
They’ll also cheerfully heckle the press, said longtime New York Giants reporter Art Stapleton of the Bergen Record.
“The most interesting part of being in the press box at the Linc is that the windows of the press box are right up against the stands,” he said. “So in a lot of the Giants-Eagles games that have gotten out of hand, the fans love to turn around and put their attention on reporters that are in the press box. … There have been times where they’re banging on the windows.”
Fans have found what individual reporters are tweeting, he said, and held their smartphones up to the glass with Twitter on the screen: We know what you’re saying, bro.
“Eagles fans are a rare breed,” Stapleton said, laughing.
The psychology of Eagles fans
The fervor of the Philly sports fan is more fact than myth, said psychologist Joel Fish, director at Philadelphia’s Center for Sport Psychology. Fish has consulted at one time or another with every major sports team in Philadelphia.
“It’s a fact that Philadelphia fans are deeply identified with their teams,” he said. “And I think part of it has to do with our identity, particularly in football, as lunch pail or blue collar. But in cities like Philadelphia, it’s also intergenerational. You’ve got three or four generations of fans who live here, who identify with their teams and pass it on to the next generation.”
Throw in a long losing streak — with no major sports championships between 1987 and 2007 — and a middle-child status situated between New York City and the nation’s capital, and Eagles fans are left with a “bit of a chip on our shoulder.”
Even as Philadelphia sports teams have begun to succeed again, Fish said, it may take a long time for fans to shed their self-image as hungry underdogs.
“I do think that Philadelphia fans have a self-image of being misunderstood,” Fish said. “There’s also a certain pride in keeping it real. There’s a certain pride in holding one another accountable.”
And so, yes: If the team’s doing badly, the fans let you know. If you’re rooting for the wrong team, they let you know.
And if the team is doing well, they party in the streets.
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“Philly knows how to party,” said Eric Bartello, a local DJ and host of the greased pole-climbing competition in Philadelphia’s Italian Market.
Philadelphia’s raucous post-win celebrations on Broad Street have become the stuff of newscopter and YouTube legend. And nothing is quite as distinctively Philly as shinnying up a greased light pole in front of City Hall.
To hear Bartello tell it, pole climbing is a tradition as old as civilization itself. And in Philly, the Italian Market festival has held a greased-pole climbing event since at least 1973.
For almost as long, Philly sports fans have been documented cheering atop light poles. But police didn’t start greasing poles to ward off climbers until the 2009 World Series, first with Crisco and then with biodegradable hydraulic fluid.
The grease was meant to be a deterrent. But it’s what made pole-climbing into a true Philadelphia tradition, Bartello said.
“Philadelphians see it as the same challenge that it presents itself to be at the Italian Market festival,” Bartello said. “Nowadays people just say, ‘Hey, there’s a pole; let’s climb it.’”
“Pole-climbing is a tradition like any other,” said psychologist Fish. “And traditions, rituals, become part of how we express ourselves. Part of expressing ourselves celebrating in Philly is now pole-climbing. Once the tradition takes root, it’s pretty hard to undo.”
Mention any high-altitude celebration, and die-hard Eagles fans tend to get out their phones: Did you see the one where they knocked the guy off the pole with a 40-ouncer? The awning dive? The one where the pole climber got treed like a kitten?
“At this point, you almost embrace the perception as a reality, and not try to refute it,” said Giants writer Stapleton. “Oh, you want to say we’re gonna beat up Santa Claus? Well, we’ll have more fun tossing barbs at Santa than we will trying to convince you that we’re not as bad as you say.”
Bartello refuses to apologize for anything anyone’s seen in the news.
“Philly carries that long-standing reputation from throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. From things like that to cheering when Michael Irvin blew out his knees on stadium turf,” he said. “We are passionate fans. And I mean passionate with a capital passionate. Other cities that criticize us for showing our passion are just being very hypocritical. Maybe even jealous.”
Ashley Marcial found herself in one of those viral YouTube videos after joining other fans atop a bus shelter following the NFC championship game — to disastrous effect. Too many more climbed aboard and its plexiglass roof collapsed, dropping Marcial onto the bench beneath and knocking her briefly unconscious. She left Broad Street on a stretcher, with what turned out to be superficial injuries.
In what might be true Philadelphia fashion, she’s coming right back out for the Super Bowl.
“I definitely won’t be on top of any bus stops or climbing any poles. But I’ll figure something out,” she said. “I’m gonna try and make sure I get that same view.”
Multiple fans mentioned watching videos of that bus shelter fall, with a mixture of sheepishness and head-shaking pride: It was yet another Philadelphia moment on YouTube.
Matthew Korfhage is a Philadelphia-based reporter for USA TODAY Network.
