Christmas spirits: Miracle Front & Cooper spreads holiday cheer with kitschy decor and themed cocktails

It turns out it’s easy to be filled with the Christmas spirit when it’s chilled over a snowball, tastes like a whiskey-infused gingerbread cookie and comes in a glass decorated with prancing Santas and winter woodland creatures. Especially if the server slides it to you over a bar bedazzled with colorful wrapping paper, under a canopy of holiday lights, while a 4-foot-tall mechanical Santa shakes and wiggles in the corner like a bowl full of jelly. 

This month, Front & Cooper in Abbott Square has gone all-in on holiday fun. The bar in downtown Santa Cruz partnered with Miracle, a Christmas-themed pop-up brand that started in New York City in 2014. The company licenses its over-the-top holiday pop-ups to high-end, mixology-focused bars across the nation and internationally. With its help, Front & Cooper transformed its hip industrial interior with kitschy holiday decor and a full menu of winter-themed cocktails served in cheeky custom glassware. 

Over the past 10 years, these holiday pop-ups have grown in popularity in major cities across the U.S. and internationally, but Miracle Front & Cooper is the first to bring the pop-up to Santa Cruz, said bar manager Patrick Ferraro. The pop-up experience runs daily through Dec. 31. 

I stopped in on the Saturday after Thanksgiving during the soft opening – it officially opened on Dec. 1 – and it was clear that Santa’s helpers had been hard at work. Twinkle lights and ornaments glinted and gleamed across the ceiling and down the walls, wrapping paper covered every horizontal surface, and a cottagey winter scene was projected on the far wall. Bartenders dressed in festive aprons zipped by, mixing pineapple rum, mezcal and coffee liqueur into 6-inch-tall Tyrannosaurus rex-shaped ceramic cups and pouring hot buttered rum into Santa-shaped mugs. 

Subtle and elegant, it is not. The decorations are vibrant and cheeky, an in-your-face demand to shake off any “bah humbugs” and celebrate with a drink that tastes like spiked hot chocolate served in a pink and white ceramic unicorn (Stocking Stuffer, $16). I swear I felt my heart grow three sizes that day (and no, it wasn’t all the sugar). 

Despite the opulent theme, the cocktails themselves are balanced and crafted with the same attention to detail that Front & Cooper typically offers. “These are the same caliber of cocktails that we usually do, with in-house made syrups, infusions and tinctures,” Ferraro said. “We’re using the Miracle menu and tweaking everything to our level to make sure that it’s consistent with the product that we always put out.”

The Snowball Old Fashioned ($15) was well-rounded and smooth, enhanced with warm spices. The bartender created the “snowball” by dramatically hacking away at a solid square ice cube with a knife. 

Front & Cooper has two bars inside the Abbott Square food court: a large cocktail bar on one side and a wine and beer bar on the other, and both were festively festooned. Silver ornaments, twinkling blue lights and fake icicles hung above the wine and beer bar, where, in addition to wintery beers and wines, a creamy and richly spiced eggnog ($16) and hot mulled wine are on the menu. There are also a couple of shooters – a tequila and hibiscus “naughty” shot and a “nice” shot with rye whiskey with gingerbread syrup, both $10 – served in tiny 1-ounce winking Santa-head glasses. 

Miracle Front & Cooper isn’t the only holiday event coming to Abbott Square this month. The Downtown Association of Santa Cruz will install a giant inflatable snow globe – allegedly big enough to have a snowball fight in – in the square on Saturday, Dec. 14, and Saturday, Dec. 21. Front & Cooper is also a stop on The Naughty List bar crawl, a pub hop and scavenger hunt hosted by the Downtown Association that spans several downtown locations. And on Thursday, Dec. 12, Front & Cooper will host a special holiday edition trivia event. 

Next door to Front & Cooper, the Golden State Toy Train Operators will return to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History on Dec. 19 with a large collection of toy trains. The exhibit runs Thursday through Sunday through Dec. 29, and it’s free to view the collection in the museum’s atrium.  

Like the holiday season, the Front & Cooper pop-up isn’t here to stay; the magic ends on Dec. 31.

725 Front St., Santa Cruz; frontandcooper.com. 

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