In this time when December holidays are more commercialized then ever; when the phrase "Marry Christmas" has been misappropriated by ultra-con forces to be a holiday version of codewords like "Support the Troops"; when one begins to wish that the damn thing would be done with already, one has to think: there has to be a better way.
And there is. A Festivus for the Rest of Us. Convinced by a sociologist in 1966 as a holiday full of arbitrary philosophical meaning, with clocks in bags of indeterminate symbolism, and the airing of grievances into tape recorders, the holiday was popularized by said scholar's son as a writer for the TV sitcom Seinfeld. The New York Times has more (reg required)
By ALLEN SALKIN
GATHER around the Festivus pole and listen to a tale about a real holiday made fictional and then real again, a tale that touches on philosophy, King Lear, the pool at the Chateau Marmont hotel, a paper bag with a clock inside and, oh yes, a television show about nothing.
More below the fold.
The first surprise is that from Tampa Bay, Fla., to Washington, from Austin, Tex., to Oxford, Ohio, many real people are holding parties celebrating Festivus, a holiday most believe was invented on an episode of "Seinfeld" first broadcast the week before Christmas in 1997
"More and more people are familiar with what Festivus is, and it's growing," said Jennifer Galdes, a Chicago restaurant publicist who organized her first Festivus party three years ago. "This year many more people, when they got the invite, responded with, `Will there be an airing of the grievances and feats of strength?'
"Those two rituals -- accusing others of being a disappointment and wrestling -- are traditions of Festivus as explained on the show by the character Frank Costanza. On that episode he tells Kramer that he invented the holiday when his children were young and he found himself in a department store tug of war with another Christmas shopper over a doll. "I realized there had to be a better way," Frank says. So he coined the slogan "A Festivus for the rest of us" and formulated the other rules: the holiday occurs on Dec. 23, features a bare aluminum pole instead of a tree and does not end until the head of the family is wrestled to the floor and pinned.
The actual inventor of Festivus is Dan O'Keefe, 76, whose son Daniel, a writer on "Seinfeld," appropriated a family tradition for the episode. The elder Mr. O'Keefe was stunned to hear that the holiday, which he minted in 1966, is catching on. "Have we accidentally invented a cult?" he wondered.
Maybe.
To postulate grandly, the rise of Festivus, a bare-bones affair in which even tinsel is forbidden, may mean that Americans are fed up with the commercialism of the December holidays and are yearning for something simpler. Or it could be that Festivus is the perfect secular theme for an all-inclusive December gathering (even better than Chrismukkah, popularized by the television show "The O.C."). Or maybe, postulating smally, it's just irresistibly silly.
Interpretations of the holiday's rules differ among Festivus fundamentalists. Take the pole.
On the show Frank Costanza says it must be aluminum and "it requires no decoration."
But he does not specify what should hold it up nor its exact height.
Krista Soroka, 33, the host of a annual Festivus party in Tampa Bay, sank her five-footer
into a green plastic pot filled with sand this year. "It's just an aluminum pole," she said,
"like Frank says.'
After her party last year, she gave each of the 100 guests a miniature: a two-inch-tall
ceramic pot filled with plaster of paris with a nail sticking out of the center.
Mike Osiecki, 26, a financial analyst in Atlanta, scheduled his Festivus gathering for friends and colleagues for Friday. He said his pole, which he bought for $10 at Home Depot, is suspended by fishing line on his porch, so "people can stare at it or dance around it if they want to."
Aaron Roberts, 28, a zoology graduate student in Oxford, Ohio, unscrewed a post from a set of metal shelves and sank it through the top of a cardboard box with weights inside.
In Chicago, Ms. Galdes anchored her six-and-a-half-footer in a Christmas tree stand. "This
year I am not having a tree," she said. Scott McLemee, a writer, and his wife, Rita Tehan, had no pole at all at their party in the Dupont Circle neighborhood in Washington. They are two of the Festivus faithful who held their parties early in December before friends headed home for more traditional affairs.
Both Dan O'Keefe and his son bless the variations. The original Festivus was constantly in flux.
"It was entirely more peculiar than on the show," the younger Mr. O'Keefe said from the set of the sitcom "Listen Up," where he is now a writer. There was never a pole, but there were airings of grievances into a tape recorder and wrestling matches between Daniel and his two brothers, among other rites."
As noted above, Festivus has three main components .
The Festivus celebration includes three major components:
The Festivus Pole: During Festivus, an unadorned aluminum pole is displayed, apparently in opposition to the commercialization of decorated Christmas trees, and because the holiday's creator, Frank Costanza, "find[s] tinsel distracting."
Local customs have changed and you may be able to decorate your pole with non-threatening plain decorations.
The Airing of Grievances: At the Festivus dinner, the celebrant tells their friends and family all of the instances where they disappointed the celebrant that year.
The Feats of Strength: The head of the family tests his or her strength against one participant of the head's choosing. Festivus is not considered over until the head of the family has been pinned. A participant is allowed to decline to attempt to pin the head of the family only if they have something better to do instead.
But Festivus is not limited to these elements. Acording to O'Keefe
"There was a clock in a bag," said Mr. O'Keefe, 36, adding that he does not know what it symbolized.
"Most of the Festivi had a theme," he said. "One was, `Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?' Another was, `Too easily made glad?'
Others have added their own pecuiler touches to the Festivus tradition.
The Festivus party to be given in Austin on Christmas Eve eve by Katherine Willis, an actress, and her husband is to include a backyard game of "pitching washers."
"There's basically a hole in the ground," she said. "You try to throw the washers in the hole, and apparently the more you drink the better you get at it."
Some things just grow. "Last year," said Ms. Galdes of Chicago, "there was break dancing. I don't know how that happened."
Could Festivus become a fixture in the pantheon of December holidays, the way Hanukkah and Kwanzaa have?
Infused as Festivus is with so much potential meaning, it is not far-fetched to imagine it as a permanent part of the American holiday firmament, said Anthony F. Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate and the author of "The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays" (Oxford University Press, 2002). After all, Halloween used to be an obscure festival observed by few, Kwanzaa was invented by an academic in California in the 1960's, and Hanukkah has been
reinvented in modern times to include gift giving. "Even Christmas comes out of a pagan
holiday that happened around the solstice," Professor Aveni said.
Arbitrary rituals, feats of strength, airing of grievances? A holiday with no set traditions,
and the freedom to make changes as revelers see fit? What's not to love?
Arbitrary rituals, feats of strength, airing of grievances? A holiday with no set traditions, and the freedom to make changes as revelers see fit? A holiday where no one is excluded due to religion or culture? What's not to love?
So if your happy with your denominational holidays, buying gifts for people you barely know due to some silly social norms, going to office parties that make you want to shoot yourself, and not knowing whether to say Marry Christmas or Happy Holidays then have fun.
But if you're feed up with it all, then maybe it's time to join me and many others in celebrating the holiday meant for the rest of us.
Mary Festivus