Spirit Capitalism

I have a grinchy confession: I loathe inflatable holiday lawn decorations. They seem to be everywhere now, and not just for Christmas. They go up for Halloween and stick around until the ground begins to thaw, when they’re deflated memories of the pumpkins and candy canes and and Easter bunnies they once were.

One house in town fills every inch of its front lawn with inflatable holiday scenes. This year, as soon as the puffy Halloween ghouls came down, up went the air-filled Santas and sleigh—alongside shouty Trump 2024 signs. There’s a literal and figurative emptiness to the inflatables that I find depressing, even sinister: We’re All Very Happy and Everything Is Totally Fine, is the song I hear when I pass them.

I’m all for genuine festive cheer. I love the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree, and I’m a sucker for a cup of warm cocoa after a cold hike with my family. I long for a season of true light and the warmth of human connection. When I say season I don’t just mean December; I mean an era, one that feels further off now, even though it was almost in our grasp.

I can’t be the only one who has noticed that the nearer we get to fascism, the more inflatable ornaments encroach on our lawns. And the earlier the Christmas commercials start airing! It’s no wonder Spirit Halloween has made such an imprint on our culture that SNL did a spoof of it; America runs on forced cheer, invented fear, and flimsy synthetics that will end up in the landfill.