"Go Devvvvviiiillllsssss!"
Posted on 12/23/2004 5:48:43 AM PST by KidGlock
Thursday, December 23, 2004
'A Festivus for the rest of us' starts catching on
By ALLEN SALKIN THE NEW YORK TIMES
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.
The first surprise is that all over the country, 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 today, 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 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 an annual Festivus party in Tampa Bay, Fla., sank her 5-footer into a green plastic pot filled with sand this year. "It's just an aluminum pole," she said, "like Frank says."
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.
Mike Osiecki, 26, a financial analyst in Atlanta, scheduled his Festivus gathering for friends and colleagues for tomorrow. 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."
In Chicago, Galdes anchored her 6-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.
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 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.
"There was a clock in a bag," said 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?' "
His father, a former editor at Reader's Digest, said the first Festivus took place in February 1966, before any of his children were born, as a celebration of the anniversary of his first date with his wife, Deborah. The word "Festivus" just popped into his head, he said from his home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
The holiday evolved during the 1970s, when the elder O'Keefe began doing research for his book "Stolen Lightning" (Vintage 1983), a work of sociology that explores the ways people use cults, astrology and the paranormal as a defense against social pressures.
Festivus, with classic rituals such as familial gatherings, totemic-but-mysterious objects and respect for ancestors, slouched forth from this milieu. "In the background was Durkheim's 'Elementary Forms of Religious Life,' " O'Keefe recalled, "saying that religion is the unconscious projection of the group. And then the U.S. philosopher Josiah Royce: Religion is the worship of the beloved community."
If O'Keefe is the real father of Festivus, Jerry Stiller, the actor who played Frank Costanza, George Costanza's father, is its Santa Claus.
"I'll take that mantle," Stiller said in an interview from poolside at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, where he was awaiting the premiere of "Meet the Fockers," a new film featuring his real son, Ben Stiller. "I'll wear my crown."
Stiller, 77, has his own interpretation of the Festivus rituals as portrayed on the "Seinfeld" episode, especially the feats of strength, which end with a wrestling match between him and George.
"It was another kind of way with dealing with something else that was going on at the time: the rebelliousness of the son against the father and the father trying to prove he was still stronger than the son," he said. "It was like King Lear." (In this case, though, the old man wins.)
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 1960s, 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," Aveni said.
The holiday does seem to be evolving.
The Festivus party to be given in Austin, Texas, 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."
A Web site she has set up, www.kwillis.com/festivus.html, provides downloads of a feats of strength challenge card, a list of grievances form and Festivus greeting cards, including one that reads, in a Hallmark-like typeface, "You're a disappointment! Happy Festivus!" Another Web site, www.crazygrrl.com, offers Festivus e-mail cards.
Soroka, in Tampa Bay, who has guests write their grievances in a ledger so she can show it at parties all year long, has added karaoke this year.
Some things just grow. "Last year," said Galdes of Chicago, "there was break dancing. I don't know how that happened."
"People watch too much TV."
That reminds me. I forgot to turn the TV on this morning. Thx.;^)
I think Putty was the best.
Merry Christmas Dan...
Relax a little, consider turning off the computer. Enjoy your family. Enjoy your Christmas. There will still be reprobates and sinners to flame in the new year.
I liked Putty too. "Gotta Support the team".
Loved Putty! My favorite was when he sold Jerry the car...next was the Rangers games
Elaine: He's a face-painter!
(LOL!!!)
I always took the Festivus episode as parody of Kwanzaa...another "invented" holiday.
GW
"Go Devvvvviiiillllsssss!"
Christmas and Festivus have exactly equal status as man-made, unBiblical holidays.
Yeah, if Frank Costanza is the Claus of Festivus, who is it for Kwanzaa--Kunta Kinte?
Uh-oh, you called it X-mas. You're gonna get it from the righteous brigade now. ;~)
Not quite. Read my #56.
And btw, I attack Xmas, too. I despise it;it's another shallow dodge. What concerns me is Christmas, not Xmas.
Dan
(Oh and please, please don't try to tell me that even 0.0001% of those who use "Xmas" are Greek students. Been there, refuted that, tired of it.)
Hey, that's not funny.
I am part Greek and take great offense to people who put down my heritage.
:-)
Actually...all holidays are unBiblical...except for Saturdays (the day of rest).
/really trying to be a smarta$$
Not at all. Festivus celebrates nothing except a bankrupt culture.
Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ. No Christmas, no Good Friday. No Good Friday, no Easter.
No Easter, no redemption, and no hope.
For starters.
It's worth a Christ-centered celebration.
Dan
I think Seinfeld became so popular because it dealt with the culture in a way that wasn't a "sad commentary." It spoofed so many different meaningless things that people got so worked up about-like when Kramer refused to wear the "AIDS ribbon" or when George "saved the whale" by pulling the golf ball out of its blowhole. It was brilliant comedy and parody.
GW
It sure did!
Is everyone who disagrees with you "self-righteous"? I tend to think of such ad-hominem feints as favorite dodges of liberals. What is it that I said about my own morality?
How could I have disagreed with your (or anyone's) use of "Xmas" in a way you'd not have labelled "self-righteous"?
Dan
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