Festivus Page 7

  by Brittany Benson, an eighth grader from Fincastle, Virginia

  “Oh, Mommy, let’s get that one,” my little sister said, pointing.

  “What do you think, Brittany?” my mom asked.

  I took her from my mom. There was something strange about her. It wasn’t really her looks; there was just a strange thing about her. I loved it.

  “I love her,” I said. “She is the coolest!”

  “All right, we’ll take her,” my mom said.

  We all started trying to think of a name. Finally, my mom said, “How about Festivus?” It fit her strange name for strange holiday and now for a strange.

  When we at home, we all wrestled with her attack and then it is time for bed. Festivus was obviously not ready for bed. She kept attacking my fingers.

  Festivus

  Two weeks later, I was watching TV when I heard the top part of “Heart and Soul” being played on the piano. The rest of my family had gone to Grandma’s, so I got really nervous. When the tune changed to “Ode to Joy” I realized that if it was a robber or someone else bad, they wouldn’t be letting me know that they were there.

  I crept to the den. I jumped into the room. I was stunned. Festivus was on the piano.

  She jumped off and went out the window. The last I heard of her, she was in Orlando, entertaining tourists in Disney World.

  The Sad Tale of Microfestivus

  by Brittany’s mom, Cathy Benson

  Microfestivus, daughter of Festivus, came into the world on Memorial Day weekend 2001. Festivus was not a very good mother, much too young to be a mom and so fat already that we knew not her pregnant state until we found a kitten in the dog crate.

  I am sad to say that Brittany and I took better care of the kitten than Festivus did. Festivus would yowl to the tiny kitty and Microfestivus would run to her only to be wrestled and boxed by her mother. Alas, Micro never got over her mother’s rejection and became always the rebel. Perhaps Microfestivus was doomed from the start trying to live up to her name and her mother’s giant shadow. She was a long-haired tortie cat with a dainty face and sweet nature. We never knew who the father was.

  Microfestivus met her demise on the road below our home when the milk truck—a tanker with a semi pulling it—knocked her off in spring 2004 on the way to our neighbor’s dairy farm. She knew no boundaries and her complaint with the milk truck was her downfall. You cannot wrestle with a big rig pulling a tanker down a winding country road. May she rest in peace.

  The Indifferent Tale of Festy

  by Scott Kirschner of Norwalk, Connecticut

  We adopted Festy, a feral cat, January 1, 2002. along with her brother Plato. She is fluffy. Her full name was Festivus, which had come from the Seinfeld show, and we’re big fans, so we kept it. But we call her “Festy.” Plato had a dumb name before: Hiccup. It was really affecting his self-worth.

  Festy

  Although Festy is a dainty little princess, she can be aggressive and pick fights with her brother. One of their favorite games is “Kitty NASCAR,” where they run and chase each other from one floor, down the front stairs, across the lower floor, then up the back stairs over and over.

  Although the cats are mostly indoors and don’t hunt, my girlfriend thinks Festy would be the better hunter.

  Festy is also an addict. She is addicted to Pounce, a cat treat. We’re trying to wean her, but the withdrawls are ugly.

  The Exploitation of Festivus

  As if it’s not enough that there are now two books about Festivus (Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us, Warner Books, 2005, Hachette Audio, 2006, expanded paperback edition, Grand Central Publishing, 2008; and The Real Festivus, Perigree, 2005), businessmen and others have schemed how to milk the holiday in myriad other ways. That this would infect it with the one element that most attracts many Festivus followers by its absence, commercialism, seems not to be a concern of those who would use Festivus for their own ends.

  In the flavor graveyard since 2002. Time for a revival?

  “We had a flash animation on our Web site where a gingerbread man came out and plugged in a Christmas tree and he got electrocuted and then the branches all fell out and it became a Festivus pole,” says Dave Stever, director of marketing for Ben & Jerry’s. The company produced a Fesstivus-flavor ice cream in 2000 and 2001. The flavor featured broken gingerbread men, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

  Charity

  WHAT: Festivus Maximus, concert to benefit Autism Society of Greater Cincinnati, held at Southgate House, Newport, Kentucky, December 18, 2004.

  BRAINCHILD OF: David Storm, musician and father of autistic son.

  PLEASE EXPLAIN: “We are trying to associate autism with something other than Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man.” RAISED: $2,000.

  WHAT: The Drive for Rebecca, a foundation for children with autism, declared itself “The Unofficial Sponsor of Festivus” in an online appeal.

  BRAINCHILD OF: Jonathan Singer, father of Rebecca.

  PLEASE EXPLAIN: “What does Festivus have to do with autism? Absolutely nothing.”

  RAISED: During December 2004, the foundation’s Festivus Web site page garnered 156 hits, but Singer does not know how much of the over $200,000 raised over the drive’s two years is due to Festivus.

  WHAT: Festivus Food and Beverage Gala, Calgary, Alberta, to benefit Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, November 2004 and 2005.

  BRAINCHILD OF: Mark Kondrat and Bill Robinson, sponsors.

  PLEASE EXPLAIN: “We were going to call it Christmas around the World. We decided a few months beforehand we wanted a catchier name.”

  RAISED: $8,500.

  WHAT: Festivus Pole outside office of University of Texas at Austin’s Student Engineering Council winter 2004 to benefit a family from the Founation of the Homeless.

  BRAINCHILD OF: Tatiana Hinosotis, SEC social chair.

  PLEASE EXPLAIN: “[We put] a pole outside of the office with gift tags decorated with what the family wanted.”

  RAISED: Around $400 in cash and gifts.

  WHAT: Entrance fee to University of Dalhousie Psychology Department End of Exams Festivus Party was a nonperishable food item for the local food pantry.

  BRAINCHILD OF: Sara King, doctoral student.

  PLEASE EXPLAIN: “We usually just get really hammered, that’s pretty much what it is.”

  RAISED: a pretty big pile of soup.

  WHAT: Fifth Annual Festivus Fundraiser to benefit AIDS research, held at the Urban Living Center in Kansas City, MO, April 26, 2008, and featuring costumed thumb-wrestling.

  BRAINCHILD OF: Julianne Donovan, graphic designer

  PLEASE EXPLAIN: “Less talk and more wrestling!”

  RAISED: $500.00

  “We were trying to get at the essence of what it would be,” he says.

  Not everyone went along with the marketing plan.

  In 2000, Joyce Millman railed in Salon against the flavor. “Weren’t those ice-cream makers listening when Frank set down the basic tenets of Festivus?” Millman wrote. “Nor commercialism. No frills. No tinsel.”

  The ultimate failure of Festivus ice cream, like the tempests caused by Festivus beer, may have been due to a backlash against the attempt to distill the essence of something undistillable.

  Or it may have been that ice-cream aficionados thought the flavor tasted like sawdust and burnt telephones. Whatever the case, the flavor sold out its 65,000-gallon initial run, but not at what Ben & Jerry’s considered a high enough “velocity.” Festivus was sent to the flavor graveyard.

  There is a petition at the Web site ipetitions.com asking the company to bring it back. “Few ice cream flavors have approached Ben & Jerry’s Festivus in terms of overall harmonious flavor composition,” the petition notes. Emily Gillespie of Ohio, signatory number 110, added, “I love Festivus! I look for it every Christmas/holiday season!

  “Oh, please, please, please!” Juan Carlos Guerrero, number 91, wrote. “Damn you B & J’s, you gave us a taste of paradise, then you rip it
away!”

  As of spring 2008, there were 120 signatures. Ben & Jerry’s says it has no plans to resurrect Festivus, but the company insists it remains pleased with its whole Festivus experience. “It was successful from a PR standpoint,” Stever says, citing statistics that 120 million people in the United States saw news stories about his company’s Festivus ice cream.

  The stomach is not the only vulnerable point at which would-be Festivus exploiters are attacking. There’s also the soul.

  Bethany United Methodist Church in Summerville, South Carolina, ran Winter Festivus ‘04 in a local park in an effort to bring young people closer to the fold. Christian rock music was blasted, a large screen showed lyrics like “Everything that has breath praise the Lord,” and hot chocolate and popcorn were served. “The focus was Christ,” says Matt Yon, Bethany’s youth minister.

  Why call it Festivus? “We figured the generation of kids would know what it is,” he said. “We’re real intentional. Christ doesn’t call on us to be complacent.”

  Yon says the event held four days before Christmas was a success, with students from five local schools participating, and he plans on using the name Festivus in years to come.

  Despite the unusual way Yon’s church used Festivus, it is possible to look at that approach as being true to the Roman roots of the holiday—when Festivus sometimes referred to the extraordinary way the lower classes behaved on officially sanctioned religious holidays.

  On the theoretical set of Festivus—The Movie

  Indeed, not all exploitations need be untrue to Festivus. It could be that the best possible outcome for legions of Festivus fans would be a Festivus movie that would somehow capture the uncapturability of the holiday and present it in a fun way.

  Something like the following, perhaps?

  Festivus—The Movie

  A TREATMENT

  by Douglas Salkin and Allen Salkin

  It’s the holiday season. We are in a department store. There are decorations everywhere—candy canes, dreidels, Happy Diwali signs—and holiday music is playing. We see a man, RODNEY THOMAS, striding through the store. He is blocked at every turn by people grabbing clothes and toys and toasters and standing in lines. Rodney is dragging his 5-year-old son, Bobby. The boy looks entranced as he passes the line to see Santa. Bobby and his dad are not stopping. They arrive at their destination: the bathroom. But there is a line here, too. As Bobby fights off peeing in his pants, his father rants about the crowds, the prices, the stupidity he sees in the world. Young Bobby hears this and his little heart shrinks as cynicism starts its infection.

  Bobby is never able to find joy during the holidays again. As he grows older we see him staring off into space as his sister tears open her presents. He ignores a girl standing under mistletoe when he is 13. And finally we come to the present day. Bobby is arriving at college on his first day of freshman year.

  He is repelled by the conformity. The parties are just like high school with more alcohol. At a dorm-wide holiday party, he stops at a small area on a wall where there’s a Happy Kwanzaa sign with a small tusk stapled to it next to an electric menorah stapled to the wall and then a bumper sticker that reads, “Honk if you love Allah!” An African-American female student, someone in a fez, and a guy with curly hair are staring at these displays while behind them two blond-haired dorm mothers are confiding to each other in whispers, “I couldn’t figure out what Muslims call Christmas.” Over the whole display is a banner that reads “Happy Chrismukwandiwallah!”

  As everyone is making plans for winter vacation, Bobby is at a loss. He gets in his car and heads west. After a long drive, annoying holiday songs on the radio, he stops at a roadside diner. He meets a young woman, SCARLETT ROBINSON, who is sitting alone in a booth dressed in a Scarlett O’Hara costume. She just ran away from her fiancé at an office holiday costume party. Bobby gives her a ride. At a rest stop they see what looks like a grizzly bear handcuffed to a tetherball pole. It turns out to be a man, FLORIDA LEE, in a bear suit. Florida had been left behind by his old partner, a carnival muscleman who pretended to wrestle a bear. The cuffs cannot be removed from him or the pole, but the pole is dug out and the bear gets in Bobby’s car with the pole still attached.

  Eventually, the three stop at a bar in a small town. They enter, and it turns out to be a Festivus party. But the guy who was supposed to bring the pole had failed to show up with one and everyone was depressed. The tetherball pole is a welcome sight. Someone has a hacksaw and frees Florida. Bobby has never seen a holiday party as great as this. They air grievances—Bobby tells the bear his fur smells bad. They wrestle. Scarlett says she’s sick of Scarlett jokes and she hates her fiancé for making her wear that stupid costume. She phones him and tells him so. She kisses Bobby.

  Back at school, Bobby starts a Festivus club and the movement grows like crazy. He becomes the King of Festivus. Things are great. Scarlett is the Queen. But as the mainstream gets wind of the holiday, commercialization starts to take hold: TV specials, ice-cream flavors, mentions on Jeopardy!, a hit song, a movie, a BOOK.

  Bobby becomes disillusioned by all of this. He believes in the inexplicable magic of Festivus. He sees that the world is using it as a fad and will toss Festivus aside like a Cabbage Patch Kid in favor of the next Beanie Baby. He looks for a sign. He stares at a Festivus pole as if it will give him guidance. When nothing happens, he is elated. He knows that the true meaning of Festivus is just this. Nothing.

  He goes home to see his family. He proceeds to get ridiculously drunk and wrestles his father to the floor and puts him in a full nelson.

  -fin-

  No? Well, something like that, anyway.

  The War on Festivus

  Festivus is being dragged into the ring for the raging public wrestling match over where to draw the line between church and state.

  The opening bell sounded December 15, 2004, when the Polk County Commission in Bartow, Florida, did not approve a request to allow religious displays on public property.

  That night under the cover of darkness, a renegade group from the First Baptist Church of Bartow placed life-size figures of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, and a snowman in a makeshift manger outside the county commission building.

  Festivus at the center of a First Amendment controvery in Polk Country,Florida

  And then, a few days later, a sign reading “Festivus for the Rest of Us—Donated to Polk County by the Seinfeld Fan Club” was erected next to the manger. No members of the supposed club came forwad to take credit.

  Howls of protest went up. “This was big.” says Jason Geary, a reporter who covered the free-speech flap for the Ledger of Lakeland. “It seemed to really polarize people.”

  Next, 78-year-old Stella Darby put up a sign honoring Zoroaster, an ancient mystic. She allowed a gay rights group to attach their own rainbow-colored sign to hers with the words “All We Want for Christmas Is Equality.”

  The commission held more hearings. Television cameras showed up.

  Johnnie Byrd, a former speaker of the Florida House and legal counsel for the Bartow church, told the cameras, “It seems like Christmas is on trial here today.”

  Commissioner Bob English, who opposed allowing the manger and other displays to stay, said the county should follow President Bush’s example. “[Look at] the White House lawn,” English said. “I don’t think you’ll see a nativity scene.”

  The commission passed a compromise measure, creating a temporary free-speech zone for anyone who registered their display with the county. Zoroaster and Jesus stayed. Festivus, unclaimed, came down. In March 2005, the commission approved a permanent free-speech zone in a picnic area next to the county courthouse. Displays are required to feature a prominent disclaimer that they are not financed by public funds or endorsed by the county.

  The next skirmish in the war broke out a thousand miles north in a suburb of Rochester, New York. The same year the hubbub was happening in Florida, Festivus was at the center of a school-based battle over how pu
blic education officials define what is religious.

  When his high school did not immediately tear down “Happy Festivus” signs students had posted in the hallways, junior Daniel Gallis wrote an editorial that was printed in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle complaining about selective enforcement of federal church/state guidelines. The following is a revised version.

  Festivus Rots Young Minds:

  One High School Student Explains Why He Wages

  War on the Holiday for the Rest of Us

  by Daniel Gallis, class of 2005 Irondequoit High School,

  West Irondequoit, New York

  Despite the finale of Seinfeld airing in 1998, before most of my class graduated from eighth grade, Festivus lives on at my public high school in upstate New York.

  In fact, judging from the way the school administration treats it, Festivus seems to hold a place more sacred here than Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other “religious” holidays.

  A few weeks before winter recess in December 2004, someone or some group posted signs throughout the hallways reminding of the celebration of Festivus on December 23. Pictures of the Festivus pole were printed on the signs with the infamous quote spoken by the fictional television character Frank Costanza, “A Festivus for the rest of us!”

  The signs stayed on the walls for weeks until they were taken down during the normal course of winter break cleaning.

  That would not have happened with “Merry Christmas” signs, which would have been yanked down immediately. Under school policy, those are forbidden, as are signs believed to promote any religion, because of the U.S. Constitution’s laws about the separation of church and state.

  As I passed those Festivus signs day after day, my fascination turned to objection. People celebrating Festivus was supposedly okay? What about the feelings of people who celebrate the birth of Jesus, the cultural celebration of Kwanzaa, or the eight-day commemoration of Hanukkah in the spirit of their true meanings? Might they not find this new substitute for their holidays to be blasphemous? A Festivus sign is a religious statement: anti-traditional religion.