Santa Fe, New Mexico, has a 100-year-old tradition of letting go of collective worry — economic and otherwise — by burning it. People submit written descriptions of their woes and physical representations, like parking tickets, divorce papers and bad report cards, to the Santa Fe Kiwanis Club, which uses it to build a 50-foot-tall marionette effigy named Zozobra, or Old Man Gloom.

For his centennial burn on Aug. 30, Zozobra scowled down at the crowd in a white tuxedo with red suspenders and a boutonniere. 

“We’re gonna put car troubles in him,” said Steph Orozco, who took the train from Albuquerque with her husband Mario to see Zozobra burn for the first time since high school. “Gosh, it’s been about 15, 20 years.”

The Orozcos couldn’t pass up the 100th anniversary, and with it, a chance to process some expensive bad luck. This year, one of their family cars was broken into and damaged. The other broke down. 

“In New Mexico, you live so far away from everything else. You gotta have a dependable vehicle,” Mario said. “And you know, a hot summer like this — ” 

“Public transportation is not sustainable in any way,” Steph finished his sentence. 

They were waiting in line to put all that “gloom” to paper and drop it in a box to go up in flames with the puppet. 

Steven Cordova came all the way from El Paso to do the same, along with his partner and their 5-year-old son, who was wearing tiger face paint. 

“I just want enough money to care for my family and not have to live check to check,” he said. 

Cordova said his salary as a manager at a big-box store isn’t stretching. So, he’s searching for a new job, maybe as a firefighter. 

“I wrote that down just now. It was a ‘gloom,’ but it was for more positivity in the next coming year,” Cordova said. 

Letting go of worry to make room for optimism is the point, according to Julia Goldberg, a longtime festival volunteer who staffed the booth where people were dropping off their glooms. 

Somewhere behind sickness and heartbreak, she said money and job stress are always big themes. 

“People have brought bills, they’ve brought canceled checks, work memos, pink slips,” Goldberg said. “A woman was here earlier and said, ‘I’m just writing down the names of all my bad colleagues.'”

Others were looking to offload more general angst about the economy and where it’s headed. 

“It kind of feels like COVID, the war in Ukraine, things that were directly affecting the economy have kind of stabilized,” said Katie Beasely, a law student who traveled from Albuquerque. “I’m just hoping that stays the same way. No more crazy global events for at least a year or something.”

Around 8 p.m., volunteers put out a last call for glooms before carrying them on stage to meet their fiery end. Clarabelle Gallegos dropped her paper into the box just under the wire.  

“It’s for the sadness that I have in my heart for the losing of my mother,” Gallegos said. 

Gallegos’ mother would have been 100 this year, just like Zozobra. And Gallegos remembers coming to this event with her family back in the 1950s. 

“It was very different,” Gallegos said. “This is really commercial.”

She chalked this up as another gloom. Gallegos said the burning was once a small community event that her whole family could attend for just $5. Now, the cheapest general admission tickets are $40 each. The event draws big name sponsors and a crowd of 65,000 from all over the country for collective catharsis. 

After a pageant, a drone show and deafening chants of “burn him,” firecrackers erupted and Zozobra’s tuxedo began to catch fire. Old Man Gloom finally went up in flames and took the crowd’s money stress, work troubles and fears about an uncertain future with him. For the night, anyway.