Celebrate Festivus

The holiday for the rest of us

Yes, you can roast your Christmas pig and deck your halls. Bake your cookies and wrap your gifts. But if that tinsel is just a little too sparkly, that tree

Festivus traditions aren’t quite like any other traditions. If this holiday is new to you, we’ve laid out a few of the basics. But the first rule of Festivus is that there are no rules to Festivus. Just have fun.

a little too pine-scented, there’s Festivus. It’s a modern holiday, celebrated on December 23 (or whenever you’d like) and introduced to the world via Seinfeld, that propagator of pop-culture cynicism. Here’s your Festivus primer and a menu inspired by all the disillusioned revelers who’ve contributed to the holiday’s brief but lively history. Raise your Festivus Pole and gather your grievances, there are muffin tops to eat.

« Bacon-Thyme Corn Muffin Tops
Elaine insisted on throwing away the muffin stumps and eating only the tops. These corn muffin tops, flecked with herbs and bacon, are for you, Elaine.

» Cognac Shrimp Bisque
Our muffin tops reach the heights of muffinness when dipped in this bisque.

« Elaine’s Big Garden Salad
Again, we look to Elaine, who really embodies the spirit of this spiritless holiday. What’s in her salad? “Big lettuce, big carrots, tomatoes like volleyballs,” according to Jerry. This is our interpretation of that salad, downsized to human proportions.

» Honey-Mustard Glazed Ham
Allen Salkin, who wrote a book on Festivus, decreed that there should be a ham coated in Junior Mints–and-Snapple glaze. Our ham is just better.

« German Chocolate Cake
One Festivus tradition has families devouring Pepperidge Farm cakes studded with M&M’s for dessert. We riffed on the idea and came up with this cake.

Next page: How to Festivus 1 2 »

Celebrate Festivus(cont.)

“I find tinsel distracting.” —Frank Costanza

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.