Christmas is over a month away, and I’m sitting in a bar that feels like being locked inside Santa Claus’s workshop with alcohol, surrounded by shimmering red and silver tinsel, writing a Christmas card to Mariah Carey. A woman wearing a knit holiday sweater with blinking lights and a headband with reindeer antlers shimmies past me and slides her letter to Mariah into the drop box by the entrance. It didn’t feel like Christmas before I walked in — Thanksgiving was still days away — and now it feels like someone vomited Christmas all over the bar.
It’s the 30th anniversary of Carey’s ubiquitous holiday anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and, to commemorate the milestone, she launched a series of holiday pop-up bars across the country. The Black Irish Holiday Bar, developed in partnership with Virgin Hotels and Bucket Listers, was launched Nov. 15 in New York, Dallas, New Orleans, Nashville, and Chicago. It’s a place for lustful Mariah Carey fans and the Christmas- obsessed to sip treacly Martinis made with three variations of Black Irish, Carey’s Bailey’s-style Irish cream, while being bombarded by an all-Mariah playlist of seemingly every Christmas song she’s ever recorded shuffling on repeat.
As far as I can tell, everyone who’s ponied up $22 for an admission ticket (which includes a welcome drink) appears to be very serious about Christmas and even more serious about Mariah Carey. At least a quarter of the attendees are singing along with Mariah the whole time,
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