Celebrate Festivus

Published on Wednesday, December 3, 2008, by CHOW Food Team / Edit Post

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Celebrate Festivus(cont.)

Festivus may be the antiholiday holiday, but it still has a creation myth. This video we found on YouTube shows Frank Costanza explaining the birth of Festivus to Kramer.

HOW TO FESTIVUS

There are a number of discrepancies between the Festivus created for the Seinfeld episode and the original holiday, created by Dan O’Keefe Sr. (whose son Dan was a writer for Seinfeld). For example: The O’Keefe family had no pole, no official feats of strength (though the O’Keefe boys may have wrestled, as brothers do), and no set date. Festivus is a holiday free of dogma, free of commercialism (yet at least two people have managed to write books about it), free of restrictive traditions. There is no Ghost of Festivus Past judging you if you don’t erect a pole. Basically, it’s a free-for-all.

Festivus Pole
Instead of a Christmas tree there’s a Festivus Pole. This unadorned aluminum pole is ascribed absolutely no symbolism.

Airing of Grievances
It’s so simple: You sit around a table and tell your friends and family how they’ve disappointed you throughout the year. Family gatherings the world over have unwittingly honored this tradition passive-aggressively; Festivus calls it out.

Feats of Strength
In a final moment of catharsis, it is said that the holiday can’t end until guests wrestle and pin the host to the floor.

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POST A COMMENT |11 Comments

COMMENT

  • There may be no Ghost of Festivus Past to judge your pole (heh), but Chow readers are at the ready.

  • Your picture of the Festivus pole is just WRONG! You show a galvanized iron pipe, which as we all should know, doesn't have the strength to weight ratio of aluminum

  • Wow! this is good. cincinnati chiropractic

  • The main course has me stuck, too, but dessert would have to include a chocolate babka.
    (For some reason I keep trying to picture how a turkey cooked by Kramer would come out. The stuffing would have to be a big strange, or maybe that's where the junior mints should come into play.)

  • Estelles Paella?

  • Oh i know Hampton tomatoes and fresh caught lobsters

  • Macanaw oeaches for dessert

  • Perhaps, the duck a l'orange from Poppies

  • Definitely need calzones and hot dogs (as close to Papaya king as you can make them. Would also suggest a nice marble rye.

  • Great idea, but the proper soup is clearly the Soup Nazi's mulligatawny, dessert is either Junior mints or a candy bar eaten with fork an knife a la George, or you could "look to the cookie". You could have the main course be Chinese delivery if Ping is your delivery boy, but not sure what the classic Seinfeld Festivus main course really should be. Need help,

  • Ha! My 4th Annual Festivus for the Restivus was this past weekend! Don't remember much about the end, but the day after phone calls of appreciation made it worthwhile!