Above you see a not-safe-for-work video travelogue, wherein you humble blogger wanders through the Spirit Christmas Store in Erie, Pennsylvania for about fifteen minutes, making snarky comments (many of them off-color) while shakily shooting video of the massive holiday retail overload.

I’m sure all my readers are familiar with Spirit Halloween stores, which move in like a hermit crab and occupy vacant storefronts for a few months each year to hawk their fine Halloween wares.

This year they’re taking baby steps toward bringing the concept of seasonal retail to Christmas. They only opened ten stores, nationwide, and the closest one to us is in Erie, Pennsylvania, a six-hour drive.

We turned it into a three-day trip, visiting Sir Troy’s Toy KIngdom, the Grove City Outlet Mall and my sister, Debbie, along the way. And we did this all the week before Thanksgiving.

You probably saw the short video I put together for our return trip to Sir Troy’s.  I decided to do something slightly more ambitious for the Spirit Christmas store. I basically just turned the camera on and rambled an ad-libbed narration as I walked through the store for the first time.

What you see in the above video is lightly edited.  I sped up some of the dead spots but didn’t edit them out completely. I’m also uncensored, so maybe you don’t want to blast this loud at work. There’s one f-bomb, and a harshly-scatalogical reference to poo a couple of times. There are also some obscenities displayed on the ugly sweaters and one reference to buttplugs.

In all fairness, we were pretty much caught up in the irreverent spirit of the store, which had more cynical, goofy, alcohol-fueled and profane celebrations of the holiday than wholesome or religious ones.

And to be honest, that was a bit refreshing. It’s sort of like when you get burned out on “Oh, Holy Night” and want to hear “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”

‘Tis the season, I guess. This is our third PopCult Video Christmas Card this year.

It’s all meant in the spirit of good fun and if you are offended by any of it, after reading this, then I am so sorry you are offended by that.

Below are a few still images, in case the shaky video induced motion sickness…

You enter the store through Gingerbread Lane. I still don’t know why the snowman is bleeding chocolate from the neck and torso.

Maybe I should’ve run this nice photo of the mall entrance to the store before going dark with the previous caption.

Letters to Santa, along with an instant declaration of whether you’re naughty or nice. Prepares kids for instant credit checks when they get older.

Impulse buys as you check out.

A selection of not-obscene light-up ugly sweaters.

They had tons of inflatables

Your PopCulteer, looking like Salad Fingers thanks to the gingerbread house behind him.