Spirit Halloween is switching its stores to Spirit Christmas in these areas
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Spirit Halloween is switching its stores to Spirit Christmas in these areas

Get into the holiday spirit.

Spirit Halloween — the festive haunt that pops up in vacant storefronts to sell costumes, accessories and decor — will soon transform into a winter wonderland and become Spirit Christmas, just in time for the holidays.

The festive chain retailer will sell inflatable decor, stocking stuffers, apparel and gifts at select locations in the Northeast — from Mays Landing, New Jersey, to Erie, Pennsylvania — where shoppers can step inside a life-sized gingerbread village, mail a letter to the North Pole and meet Santa Claus for a photo-op.

For more than 30 years, Spirit Halloween has operated on a seasonal schedule ahead of spooky season. Tania Savayan/The Journal News/USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“Spirit Christmas is a new concept for us, and we’re hopeful it will resonate with our customers,” the company said in a statement to Fast Company.

“Our goal is to create a festive retail experience that captures the spirit of the season, much like we do for Halloween.”

Spirit Halloween started in 1983 as a pop-up in Castro Valley, California, before it was purchased in 1999 by Spencer Gifts, who has owned the iconic storefronts ever since.

“They laughed at me and put me in a corner hidden behind an old restaurant. When I did $100,000 in 30 days, they were astounded,” founder Joe Marver told the New York Times in a 2000 interview, per USA Today.

Now Spirit Halloween operates more than 1,500 seasonal stores nationwide every single year.

The pop-up retailer will be swapping its scary costumes for jolly red hats ahead of Christmas. David DelPoio/USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
While Spirit Halloween has more than 1,500 locations across the US, Spirit Christmas will only be open at 10 locations this year. GABY VELASQUEZ/ EL PASO TIMES / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Spirit Christmas, however, will only be available at 10 locations.

In New Jersey, festive shoppers can head to Marlton, Brick, Mays Landing and Woodbridge, and New Yorkers will have to travel to Albany, Bohemia or Poughkeepsie to visit one of the storefronts. There will also be pop-ups in Erie, Pennsylvania; Waterford, Connecticut; and Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

The Mays Landing, New Jersey, location will open its doors early, on October 18, while the rest are slated for early November, per Fast Company.

Spirit Halloween became the punchline of a “Saturday Night Live” skit last week, which elicited pushback from the holiday pop-up retailer.

After one of the sketches poked fun at Spirit Halloween, the company posted a meme on X of a photoshopped costume package emblazoned with the “SNL 50” logo. The fake costume, titled “irrelevant 50-year-old TV show,” said it included “dated references,” “unknown cast members” and “shrinking ratings.”

“We’re great at raising things back from the dead,” the company quipped.

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