Festivus Read online

  COLIN: The two writer guys said I should just sit next to Elaine. I was supposed to make Elaine uncomfortable. I was not her type. I had a line they didn’t use. As they go around the table, I’m looking at Elaine and I’m drooling at her and I’m like, “You’re a foxy fox.” Before we shot it, Michael Richards said, “You should go up to her and say, ‘You’re foxy, really really foxy’ and jump on the table and pull down your pants.” I wasn’t a member of SAG at the time and I was, “Dude, if I was you, maybe, but I’m not going to be rewriting dialogue and stepping on people. I’m just going to do what they tell me and hope the check clears.”

  COLIN: The magic of Festivus had not yet hit in my mind. In anybody’s mind, really.

  what Collin Malone didn’t do

  TRACY: My first inkling of all of this was when Ben & Jerry’s came out with this Festivus ice cream. I was like, “What the hell is that?”

  DANIEL: Around Christmastime, people I don’t know, their humorous way of introducing themselves to me is “Happy Festivus.”

  *The notes on the official DVD of the episode conflict with portions of Letts’s account. The DVD notes say exterior shots were shot Sunday, November 23rd, with additional shots done the next afternoon, November 24 th, and the rest filmed in front of a live studio audience the following night, November 25th. The first cast reading of the script was on Thursday, November 20th. The onscreen notes also conflict with Malone’s account. The notes claim that Stiller did not mess up the line, which he uttered midway through the Festivus scene during the dinner. But the notes also, confusingly, claim that at one point in the production, Stiller had been scripted to conclude the final scene at the Festivus party, where the wrestling occurs, by saying, “Happy Festivus, Georgie. This is going to hurt you more than . . . I lost my train of thought.”

  So Frank coined the slogan “A Festivus for the rest of us!” and formulated other rituals: The holiday occurs on December 23, features a bare aluminum pole instead of a tree, forbids tinsel, and does not end until the head of the family is wrestled to the floor and pinned. The final act of the episode shows a Festivus party at the Costanza house.

  Just as the holiday changed for television—most notably with the addition of the pole—the original O’Keefe Festivus in Chappaqua, New York, was constantly in flux. “It was entirely more peculiar than on the show,” the younger Mr. O’Keefe said.

  On the official Seinfeld DVD, there is a bonus feature about the making of the Festivus episode. In it, the younger Mr. O’Keefe said his father has adjusted to the way the holiday has continued to change as it has spread into the real world. “My father’s reaction to the whole Festivus phenomenon, such as it is,” said the younger Mr. O’Keefe, whose shaggy hair looked soppingly overgelled for his DVD appearance, “was at first he was a little sort of weirded out by it, but evenutally it became: ‘Yes! Vindication!’

  “He thought his message was getting out. He was very excited by it.”

  Still, the elder Mr. O’Keefe’s earlier trepidation reflects the knowledge gleaned from his studies of the origins of religion—that once these things start spreading, no one knows where they might go.

  “Have we,” he wondered when first interviewed about his holiday, “accidentally invented a cult?”

  Perhaps.

  The holiday has grown like mad in the real world. From a Festivus disc-golf tournament in Oregon, to a living room in Kentucky where a cat with a special “lion cut” hairdo frolics during Festivus, to a Festivus carol sung bawdily at an annual party in Manitoba, to a Festivus wine bottled on a working oil field in Oklahoma, Festivus is a gloriously fertile vine spreading everywhere. Festivus has been embroiled in a free-speech controversy in Florida, a Super Bowl victory in Baltimore, and a tax policy debate in Washington, D.C.

  Festivus is just a word, and maybe that is its magic. There is no ruling force, no humans claiming otherworldly authority to dictate its rules and ordain its leaders. Festivus describes whatever it is people want to celebrate. Thanks to its star turn on Seinfeld, a few bare-bones rituals have become loosely attached to Festivus, but none of these are sacred. All, as is apparent throughout this book, are malleable, easily discarded in favor of something more suited to the group celebrating Festivus at any particular moment.

  Something about a holiday that requires no tinsel, no trees, no dripping wax, no harvest horn o’ plenty, and no flattery resonates more loudly every year. It could be that people are fed up with the commercialism of the holidays, or that there is a great yearning for an all-inclusive secular theme for December gatherings. Or it could be that Festivus is just irresistibly silly. One thing is for sure: Festivus is big. In mid-2005, there were about 118,000 Google hits for Festivus, and by 2008, there were nearly a million. Festivus has grown way beyond Seinfeld just as it evolved beyond what it was for the rabble of ancient Rome. It is beyond anything that can be controlled by anyone.

  SECTION 2

  Preparing for the Festivus Party

  When Is Festivus?

  For many celebrants, Festivus is not observed instead of the more traditional December holidays, but in addition to them—perhaps as an antidote to them. That’s why December 23, the date for Festivus given on Seinfeld, is seen only as a suggestion, one that is usually ignored in favor of dates that aren’t within travel periods for the more back-home holidays. Early December is popular for Festivus celebrations at offices, bars, homes, dark parking lots—anywhere.

  But any day of the year can be Festivus. For the extended Kehler family, Festivus comes in July. An aluminum tent pole is erected in the center of an Ontario campground and an Airing of Grievances is held around the fire. “People tell embarrassing stories about themselves,” says Therese Kehler, 40, an editor at the Edmonton Journal, “and kids are allowed to air grievances against their parents.”

  Even at the height of summer, the delicious darkness of Festivus can flourish. One year, Kehler’s son expressed his disappointment about the time she didn’t take him to a hockey game in which Wayne Gretzky played. Next, a female family member was ridiculed for once being so occupied flipping her hair coquettishly at a construction worker that she walked blindly into a glass door.

  Therese Kehler’s brother Bob topped everyone another year with his grievance against his own body, revealing a secret not even his sister had known. “He has three breasts,” Therese says, explaining that she finally understood why she’d never seen her brother with his shirt off. “Three nipples.”

  Festivus is anytime, pretty much any way.

  The Pole

  Festivus Poles can be mighty or meek, as seen in these examples from Florida

  A group in Ontario made do with this pole, which literally sucks

  This unadorned length of lusterless metal or something that looks like metal is the one totem of Festivus that nearly everyone agrees is essential. “It has a starkness that sets it apart from the pageantry of other winter holidays,” said Patrick Baker, a cryobiologist at Miami University of Ohio. “It’s not telling you better days are ahead or anything else.”

  TYPES

  Many different types of pole are used. For a party Baker attended in Oxford, Ohio, the host pried a support post from a set of steel shelves to serve as a pole and anchored it in a box filled with dumbbell weights. At financial analyst Mike Osiecki’s annual Festivus in Atlanta, the aluminum fencepost he bought for $10 at a hardware store is suspended by fishing line on his porch so that “people can stare at it or dance around it if they want to.”

  The pole is generally metal or looks like it is metal. On the Seinfeld Festivus episode, the character Frank Costanza says his pole is aluminum, a substance he praises for its “very high strength-to-weight ratio.” In the real world, Festivus celebrants have used cardboard tubes painted silver, aluminum foil, and heating pipes.

  ACQUISITION

  Poles are typically purchased at Home Depot, where a 6- to 10-foot custom cut of 2-inch-diameter aluminum electrical conduit thick enough to lever up
a tipped-over Winnebago sells for about $20. A quarter-inch-diameter pole that is nearly thin enough to pick shrimp bits from a friend’s teeth across the room goes for under $5. The poles can be found in the plumbing department.

  eBay shoppers in December 2004 could find a “Lighted Festivus Pole, not 2B confused w/Christmas Tree” at the “Buy It Now” price of $45. The item was described as: “Hand polished Alum. Pole. Base made from MDF and hand-painted. Avail with blinking bulb or Standard Bulb. Pictures do not show the finish of this item well . . . ”

  Rival Amazon.com’s online store featured a “Festivus Brushed Steal Pole Lamp,” which looked a lot like a regular pole lamp. One customer wrote in his review of the item, “This is a pretty good, sturdy yet light enough Festivus pole to adorn your December 23rd holiday, but what’s with the attached lights? I say strip ‘em off.”

  Free, pre-owned poles are also abundant. Dumpsters outside building demolitions often hold ample lengths of used conduits, popes, and flagpoles. These items will be free, but while diving in the Dumpster, veterans advise, it is best to avoid touching anything that looks like asbestos or that has hair.

  Heading to the closet has been found to solve the pole problem. By removing hanging clothes, the rod becomes available. If it’s made of wood, it can be wrapped in foil. What was once obfuscated under hangers can become the star of the party.

  Festivus Poles Incorporated

  It is not fair to say that the most boring job in the world is manufacturing stairway railings, but let’s just say it is a profession which could benefit from a little goosing up. Festivus is a world-class gooser.

  One day, when Tony Leto was sitting around the offices of The Wagner Companies, a railing maker in Milwaukee, he read an article about the spread of Festivus, a holiday which requires straight lengths of aluminum.

  “We make straight lengths of aluminum,” Mr. Leto, the executive vice president of sales and marketing, thought. He met with his boss. “I told him,” Mr. Leto recalls, “ ‘We’re not going to make a fortune, but we’re going to have fun and we get a little attention.’”

  They bought the domain name festivuspoles.com. Research and development followed. A product emerged. The full-sized model, an unpolished six-foot pole with a snap-together base, was put online in October 2005 for $38. The table-top model, three-feet, sells for $30.

  The governer of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle, a Seinfeld fan, proudly posed with his Wagner pole that year and donated it to the Wisconsin historical museum in 2006.

  Blogs that mentioned Festivus started linking to the Wagner site. The Associated Press wrote about the company’s poles and they appeared on The Today Show.

  “We were getting 25 orders an hour in the days before Festivus,” Mr. Leto says. “And on Festivus Eve, people were paying $200 for next day delivery.”

  The company sold over 1,700 poles during the 2006 season and 2,100 in 2007. Working at Wagner is now cool. Mr. Leto wishes his barber Happy Festivus.

  “How much fun can there be to the aluminum railing business?” Mr. Leto asks. “This gives us something to laugh about.”

  The governor of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle, is almost exactly the same height as his pole.

  MOUNTING

  If the pole is roughly the same height as the distance between a home’s floor and ceiling, it can simply be wedged between the two. This approach might not set the classiest mood, as exemplified by the experience of Ryan Miles, a strobe-light salesman from Nashville, Tennessee. For three Festivi (the plural of Festivus), Miles, 29, has jammed a pole between the ceiling and floor of the hallway that opens onto the den of his rented house. Of his annual party, he notes, “The guest list includes close friends and fewer and fewer girls attending each year.”

  Software consultant James Eigner salutes the pole at a party in Chicago

  (It may not only be the pole that dissuades the opposite sex. It could be the beverage of choice, a Festivus invention of Ryan and his friends called “Swill.” It’s made by pouring a case of beer, a fifth of vodka, and three frozen lemonade concentrates into a cooler. “The foam will settle,” Ryan assures.)

  There are tidier techniques. An elegant one is filling a large flowerpot with sand and working the pole into the center. Some Festivusers in Texas take the trouble to screw brackets into the floor and ceiling to hold their pole in place. Trevor Hare in Tucson worms his into a one-gallon tub filled with rocks. Unlike Ryan, Trevor exhibits class. When Festivus season passes, he says, “The pole is stored, wrapped in the finest wool, in the garage.”

  NOT MOUNTING

  For their seven annual Festivus gatherings so far, Lianne and Mark Yarvis of Portland, Oregon, have invented their own tradition that specifies the pole must be “borrowed” and brought by a guest. A flagpole with a gold eagle on top has been among those that have served.

  The pole is then passed around during the Airing of Grievances. Whosoever holds the pole must grieve. “Some people are shy about it, but if you’re handed the pole it’s clearly your turn,” Lianne, 36, says. “It puts people on the spot. It helps break the shyness. We don’t want anybody to weasel out.”

  TOPPING

  While topping is not at all necessary, some, like Troy Kinnaird and his chums in Knoxville, Tennessee, choose to add low-key Seinfeld-inspired, untinselly headpieces to the pole.

  Since Junior Mints, a chocolate-covered candy that in one episode of Seinfeld accidentally drops into a patient’s body during surgery, are often served at Festivuses (another plural of Festivus), it’s worth considering puncturing the candy’s white cardboard box and impaling it.

  Three Knoxville, Tennessee, pals who impale

  AS AN APHRODISIAC

  Putting a pole in the middle of a room at a party can attract strippers. At West End Comedy Theatre’s 2004 Festivus celebration in Dallas, which advertised “for the nondenominational, an inoffensive get-together,” female comedians took turns dancing provocatively with the pole. Party organizer Doug Ewart was stunned—and pleased. Set up under a spot-light on the comedy club’s stage, “The pole saw more action than anyone else,” Ewart says. “I thought it was a pretty neat development.” He adds that the pole will definitely be a part of future Festivus festivities.

  FOR LIMBO

  While it’s true that the ready availability of a metal pole can lead to some destructive party behavior (impromptu indoor baseball, apple hockey, and pretend-Superman-bend-the-rod-until-herniating not least among them), there is one primitive pole-based party activity that has lent itself perfectly to the spontaneous nature of Festivus. “My friend Dan always ends up starting a game of limbo,” says Sara King, 29, a psychology graduate student who hosts an annual Festivus party in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dan Boudreau, a medical student, is the three-years-running Festivus limbo champion of Halifax.

  A warning: After limbo, the pole, now loose on the dance floor, cannot be trusted. “We used a coatrack one year,” Sara says. “It got smashed all up and ended up in bed with me. I passed out and I have no idea what happened. I woke up the next morning and it was all in pieces in my bed.”

  Basic Rules of Festivus Limbo, Halifax-Style

  Start the music (recommended: “The Limbo Rock” by Chubby Checker: “Limbo ankolim-bonee / Bend back like a limbo tree . . . ”).

  Two players hold the pole at either end and the rest of the players form a line and try to pass under the pole without touching it.

  Players cannot have any body part but their feet touching the floor.

  The pole gets lowered with each round. The last player left who has not grazed aluminum is the winner.

  The champion receives a shot of Sambuca. Then everyone else does shots of Sambuca, too.

  NOT HAVING ONE

  On the evidence, not having a pole can lead to overintellecru-alization of Festivus. Scott McLemee, a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for Inside Higher Ed, filed this piece explaining his decision to go poleless. He requests that no one leave a comment on his blog (www.mclemee.com) telling
him exactly where he can stick a pole should he choose to purchase one next year.

  Antidisestablishpoletarianism

  by Scott McLemee

  Each year, my wife and I invite friends to gather around the aluminum pole—or at least the place it would be, if we ever got around to buying one—and discuss the True Meaning of Festivus. After long cogitation, I’ve concluded that Festivus is the post-modern “invented tradition” par excellence.

  In the premodern era, when people lived in villages, spring would draw near and everybody would think, “Time for the big party where we all eat and drink a lot and pretend for a few days not to notice each other humping like bunnies.” People didn’t say, “We do X because it is our tradition.”

  But then, starting maybe three hundred years ago, things got modern, and people started inventing traditions. In the nineteenth century folks started singing “traditional Christmas carols,” even though for hundreds of years they celebrated with regular church hymns.

  Postmodernism is what happens after you’ve been modern so long that being modern doesn’t seem special. You start putting things in quotation marks—I could cite stuff here about “the decline of metanarratives” and “the simulacrum.” I guess I just did.

  At Festivus, all the vague hostility of enforced togetherness gets an outlet. It’s hard to get sentimental about an aluminum pole, but as long as there are midwinter holidays, the spirit of Festivus will fill the air.

  SOUVENIR

  Guests departing from Krista Soroka’s annual Festivus bash in Tampa, Florida, take with them something to remember Festivus by all year long. Here’s how she does it.

  Mini-Pole Party Favor

  MATERIALS

  plaster of Paris

  container and stir stick for mixing plaster

  1-inch-tall terra-cotta (also known as unglazed clay) pot

  2-to 3-inch-long straight nail with a narrow (not flat) head