Enough with the holiday bars

‘Tis the season of spiked hot cocoa in novelty mugs and donning Christmas sweaters before waiting in line to take Instagram photos.

The holiday bars are back, baby. And this year, they’re making me feel like the Grinch.

Holiday bars typically run from the weekend after Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, and Philly has no shortage of them. This season brings pop-ups that serve cocktails inside snowmen-shaped mug, a mini-golf course with a greased North Pole, and a slew of Santa impersonators looking to make some extra cash.

And cash they will make: Holiday pop-upcan give bars and restaurants an extra leg up during what already is the busiest time of year, with the most successful — such as New York City’s Miracle on 9th Street — spawning lucrative franchise opportunities. Sometimes, however, they yield more coal than Christmas magic, like when drunk St. Nick impersonators spill into the street at the end of the annual SantaCon bar crawl.

» READ MORE: Philly is in festive mode: The holiday bars are here.

Holiday bars have always struck me as late-stage capitalism holly jolly-ified, because they commodify something as simple (and cheap!) as the joy of drinking with your friends in December.

Despite this, I have a soft spot for them. I love taking in the slightly tacky displays and sipping on a sugary cocktail from a novelty glass that I’ll pay extra to take home. There’s also something magical about the tipsy train ride home that comes after, where my friends and I crack enough jokes to turn an overrated experience into one we end up doing annually.

This season feels different to me . One bar has ruined it for the rest by stripping away the whimsy and up-charging for something more nefarious: A holiday bar distilled down to its barest elements — gimmicky cocktails and Hobby Lobby discount-bin decor held together by a barely-there theme. There’s no sentiment behind the displays of miniature nutcrackers and colorfully wrapped (empty) gift boxes, just profit motive.

The batch’s most egregious offender is the Emo Christmas bar pop-up that runs through Dec. 28 at Foundation., an event space beneath the Divine Lorraine on North Broad Street. It’s hosted by Bucket Listers, an New York City-based company that puts on limited-run events in cities across the U.S., from a Christmas Bar co-signed by Mariah Carey in Los Angeles to a murder-mystery dinner series in Miami.

In Philly, Bucket Listers’ track record is mixed: When I attended their cereal-themed pop-up bar in March, plastic bowls of resin Fruit Loops fell from the photo wall. But I had also won putt-putt at this year’s Christmas collaboration with Libertee Grounds, where the mini-golf course was decked out in Philly-centric holiday decor, like a sleigh covered in Philadelphia Parking Authority tickets.

So when I learned just before Thanksgivingthat Bucket Listers was hosting an Emo Christmas pop-up, I was undeterred by any red flags. I love Christmas. I spent high school on the outskirts of a clique of emo teens, cool enough to partake in My Chemical Romance listening sessions but not cool enough tovape with.stick-and-poke . If I was going to love a holiday bar, it should’ve been this one.

I paid $57.20, after fees, for two Friday night tickets to Emo Christmas. The cost included a welcome cocktail each, but, as I would later learn, any drinks or food beyond that would be pay-as-you-go.

The only thing that’s punk rock about Bucket Listers’ Emo Christmas bar is that it doesn’t care about first impressions.

The decorations feel half-baked, amounting to fake Christmas trees and a trio of full-sized nutcrackers that had black Sharpie smeared under their eyes to mimic eyeliner. Across from them stood a mannequin dressed as Santa, with swide-swept fringe bangs so you know he’s emo. Like everything else in the bar, he smelled lightly of kitchen grease.

» READ MORE: I was shut out of the city’s holiday bars. Here’s how to get a seat.

Each Bucket Listers pop-up is clearly designed as Instagram bait, as evidenced by the influencers that post about each one. Yet the space is too dim to take any photos. The only lights in the room emanated from the Christmas trees or red-tinted neon signs with phrases that no one has ever uttered seriously, such as “happy holidays, you bastard.”

It’s clear the space was decorated by posers. The back wall is covered in Christmas stockings labeled in chicken-scratch with the names of so-called pop-punk greats: Brendon Urie, Pete Wentz, and my personal favorite, Tavis B., a misspelled bastardization of Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker.

I cringed, and cringed again while skimming the food and drink menus, which read as a list of poorly-constructed pun opportunities. There’s the Panic! at the Pizza Bites (deep-fried pockets of sausage and cheese) and the Blink Wing82, which come in sets of six with either Buffalo sauce or dry rub. The most unfunny is the Still Into-fu, a tofu hoagie on a long roll named after “Still into You,” a pop love song from Paramore.

My friend had already sent of photo of the menu to be flamed by her groupchat. “The obvious choice is Panic! At the Disco Fries,” she read from her phone. “BlinkWing182? All the Small Wings is right there.”

An unexpected silver lining was our bartender. A true elder emo, he led with apathy, dodging questions about what’s good on the menu and the decorations with a shrug and a simple answer: “I don’t know. I just work here.”

The bartender’s eyes roll while squeezing black food coloring into the aptly named I’m Not Okay, a vodka-club soda cocktail zhuzhed up with a whisper of blackberry. By the time he got to my Mezcal Confessional, he was was over it, leaving out the orange bitters to serve me a clear glass of mezcal spiked with brown sugar.

Not that it mattered. Both drinks tasted like rubbing alcohol despite being made with completely different spirits. That’s a first — a Christmas bar where the drinks aren’t sweet enough. We toasted to the bartender’s commitment to the bit while an overdramatic ennui overtook me.

I felt like I was taken for a ride, and not one on Santa’s sleigh.

Emo Christmas preys on the nostalgia. All holiday bars are designed to do this. Maybe the decor reminds you of a favorite window display from childhood or a scene from your guilty-pleasure Christmas movie. Or perhaps the peppermint espresso martini recalls the Schnapps you downed on your first pre-Thanksgiving Blackout Wednesday. The anticipation of it could even feel like waiting for a turn with mall Santa.

I usually don’t mind paying extra for an experience like this. When done right, these bars conjure feelings that are more difficult to come by in adulthood: whimsy, silliness, glee.

I came to Emo Christmas in search of all of those things. I left with none, only a check for $82.00 and a shriveled-up Grinch-sized heart.