Yo, Lisa...what about Festivus?

[GeezerSue 7]

Have you thought about celebrating Festivus?

A SPREADING DARKNESS

Festivus began on "Seinfeld" and is catching on.

YEAR-ROUND JOY Krista Soroka's Festivus includes a pole as as well as a book of grievances that she shows off all year.

Fooey to the World: Festivus Is Come

By ALLEN SALKIN

Published: December 19, 2004

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 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.

"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?' "

~~~~~~~

[DeLarla 22]

The Festivus Pole is being ejected tonight. I poll dance as part of the anti-festivities.

[Zoe 6]

Funny, Sue, I cut out that same NYT article last Sunday! It was great to learn the real story behind Festivus. We're all big Seinfeld fans in my mixed-marriage non-religious family, and I've got enough brothers to make the "feats of strength" work. . . let's not even talk about the airing of grievances. Get out the metal poles, and happy Festivus to everyone!