Festivus is an annual holiday created by writer Dan O'Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a scriptwriter for the TV show Seinfeld.[1][2] Although the original Festivus took place in February 1966 as a celebration of O'Keefe's first date with his wife, Deborah,[2] many people now celebrate the holiday on December 23, as depicted on the December 18, 1997 Seinfeld episode "The Strike".[1][3] According to O'Keefe, the name Festivus "just popped into his head."[2] The holiday includes novel practices such as the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the "Feats of Strength" are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode. The original holiday featured far more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O'Keefe's book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O'Keefe family, and how O'Keefe amended or replaced details of his father's invention to create the Seinfeld episode.[4]
Some people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld,[2] now celebrate the holiday in varying degrees of seriousness; the spread of Festivus in the real world is chronicled in the book Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us.[5]
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Festivus is introduced in "The Strike", which revolves around Cosmo Kramer returning to work at H&H Bagels. He does so after learning that a 12-year strike in which he participated has ended (because the minimum wage has risen to the level of the wages demanded by the workers twelve years earlier). Kramer becomes interested in resurrecting the holiday when at the bagel shop, Frank Costanza tells him how he created Festivus as an alternative holiday in response to the commercialization of Christmas.
Frank Costanza's son, George (Jason Alexander), creates donation cards for a fake charity called The Human Fund (with the slogan "Money For People") in lieu of having to give office Christmas presents. When his boss, Mr. Kruger (Daniel von Bargen), questions George about a $20,000 check he gave George to donate to the Human Fund as a corporate donation, George hastily concocts the excuse that he made up the Human Fund because he feared persecution for his beliefs, for not celebrating Christmas. Attempting to call his bluff, Kruger goes home with George to see Festivus in action.
Kramer eventually goes back on strike from his bagel-vendor job when his manager tells him he cannot have time off for his new-found religious holiday. Kramer is then seen on the street with a sign reading "Festivus yes! Bagels no!", and chanting to anyone passing the store "Hey! No bagel, no bagel, no bagel..."[6]
Finally at Frank's house in Queens, Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George gather to celebrate Festivus. George brings Kruger to prove Festivus is real.
In the episode, though not in the original O'Keefe Family celebration, the tradition of Festivus begins with an aluminum pole. During Festivus, the Festivus Pole is displayed unadorned. The pole was chosen apparently in opposition to the commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees, because it is "very low-maintenance", and also because the holiday's patron, Frank Costanza, finds tinsel "distracting". The basics of the Festivus pole are explained by Frank in two separate situations.
When not being used, the Festivus Pole is stored away. In "The Strike," Frank Costanza reveals he stores his in a crawlspace.
In "The Strike", a celebratory dinner is shown on the evening of Festivus prior to the Feats of Strength and during the Airing of Grievances. The on-air meal appeared to be meat loaf or spaghetti in a red sauce. The original holiday dinner in the O'Keefe household featured turkey or ham followed by a Pepperidge Farm cake decorated with M&M's, as described in detail in O'Keefe's The Real Festivus. In Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us by Allen Salkin, modern observances of Festivus tend to feature heavy drinking, including beer, rum, bourbon, or wine. In the Seinfeld episode, no alcohol is served, but George Costanza's boss, Mr. Kruger, drinks from a flask.
The celebration of Festivus begins with Airing of Grievances, which takes place immediately after the Festivus dinner has been served. It consists of lashing out at others and the world about how one has been disappointed in the past year. Every household has its own traditions; in one house, the Airing of Grievances consisted of writing the grievances on the fridge in marker.[7]
The Feats of Strength is the final tradition observed in the celebration of Festivus. Traditionally, the head of the household selects one person at the Festivus celebration and challenges that person to a wrestling match.[8] The person may decline if they have something else to do, such as pull a double shift at work. Tradition states that Festivus is not over until the head of the household is pinned in a wrestling match. The Feats of Strength are mentioned twice in the episode before they actually take place. In both instances, no detail was given as to what had actually happened, but in both instances, George Costanza ran out of the coffee shop in a mad panic, implying he had bad experiences with the Feats of Strength in the past.
Although it is not an official element of the holiday or its celebration, the phenomenon of the Festivus Miracle is mentioned twice in the original episode, both times occurring in the Costanza household, and both declared by Kramer.
Miracle #1;
Miracle #2;
From these examples, it can be inferred that Festivus miracles tend to be minor coincidences that are inconvenient for one of the involved parties (Elaine did not want to see the Betting Shop Guy, and two-faced Gwen mistakes Elaine as the "ugly girl" she has been hearing about).
Festivus (with long "i", festīvus) is a Latin word, but not the name of a festival: in one reference it is said to mean "festive"[9]. A scholarly work on the etymology of the word by Dr. Brian A. Krostenko summarized in Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us, concludes that in ancient Rome the word evolved, referring at times to the way the common folk would misbehave on official religious holidays, and at other times to a certain snooty attitude amongst the higher classes. It is possible that the elder O'Keefe, who was studying ancient rituals, knew this etymology and adapted it for his family's holiday.[10] The English word festive derives from festīvus, which in turn derives from festus "joyous; holiday, feast day".[11][12]
In the O'Keefe tradition the holiday would take place in response to family tension, "any time from December to May".[13] The phrase "a Festivus for the rest of us" also derived from an O'Keefe family event, the death of the elder O'Keefe's mother.[13]
The elder O'Keefe wrote a book that deals with idiosyncratic ritual and its social significance, a theme with great relevance to Festivus tradition.[14]
