I've been highly intrigued by the holiday "Festivus" lately. As some of you may know, Festivus was "invented" by George Costanza's father, Frank, on an episode of Seinfeld back in '97.



In the episode (called "The Strike") Frank explains to Kramer that he invented Festivus out of his disgust for holiday commercialism. Many years ago, while shopping for a doll for young George, a fight errupted between him and another holiday shopper who grabbed for the same doll. "As I rained blows opon him, I realized there had to be another way!", says Frank.

During Festivus, a plain aluminum pole is displayed in lieu of a Christmas tree.....because Frank "finds tinsel distracting". Immediately following the holiday meal, there is something called the Airing of Grievances. Each person at the festivities gets up and tells the others how they have let him or her down throughout the past year. As Frank boldly proclaims at the dinner table, "I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!"

Festivus is celebrated on December 23rd and is officially over when the head of the household is wrestled to the ground in something call the Feats of Strength . Many modern-day Festivus observers have added other competive activities to the "Feats of Strength", such as thumb wrestling, washer tossing, and hula-hooping.

Apparently, many of the Festivus traditions mentioned throughout the episode are loosely adapted from the childhood memories of one of the show's writers, Dan O'Keefe. His father is the true inventor of the holiday, which came to be in the mid 1960's. The original holiday does differ a bit from what was portrayed on Seinfeld and is described in O'Keefe's book, "The Real Festivus". There is also a book called "Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us" by Allen Salkin, which deals more with Festivus as it is celebrated today. I haven't read either of these books, but would love to get my hands on them to educate myself further on the phenomenon of Festivus.

I recently told DH that I thought it would be fun to start a Festivus tradition in our own household. I like its connection with disgust for modern holiday commercialism. I also like the idea of our children growing up with a fun and unorthodox "holiday" that no one else (that we know) celebrates. The wonderful thing about Festivus is that its traditions are not meant to be rigid. Aside from the Festivus pole, the Airing of Grievances, and the Feats of Strength, there are no other activities set in stone. In fact, O'Keefe states that each year his family celebration had a different "theme".

This holiday really fits DH like a glove. He's never been terribly fond of me putting up Christmas decorations each year.....and I never hear the end of it if I actually spend money on Christmas ornaments or something. :) I grew up in a family that makes a huge deal of Christmas. The shopping madness, the over-the-top decorations....and things ALWAYS had to happen the exact same way each year. Mostly, it was my mom's family propelling this huge holiday machine, and my dad was just along for the ride. I remember my dad once saying, "I wish we didn't have to do this every year", referring to the stress-induced frenzy that my mom always got herself worked into. I didn't realize it when I was younger, but now I see that my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles all subscribed to the mindset that even if you don't have the money, go ahead and spend like crazy anyway....and then pay dearly for it throughout the coming year. Stupid.

Although DH's family does celebrate Christmas, it's certainly not the huge mandatory extravaganza that I grew up with. At first, I had a hard time getting used to DH's bah-humbug spirit. I just thought that everybody was crazy about the holidays and when I moved 900 miles away from my family 6 1/2 years ago, it just felt weird not to make Christmas into a huge event. I have since come to respect DH's bah-humbugness and even share it to some extent. I am probably not putting up our tree this year or any of our decorations, and it doesn't bother me. When I mentioned to DH that he should get the Christmas decorations down from the attic for me, he replied with, "Why? I'll just have to put them all back up there in January." He has a point. Really.

I would just end up spending an entire day rummaging through boxes and putting up decorations that no one but DH and I would see or care about, since we don't usually have people over for Christmas and we don't have kids yet. I would have to keep Bob's busy toddler hands away from the fragile 1950's silver aluminum tree and dainty glass ornaments, and frankly, that doesn't sound like fun to me. Not worth the effort.

So, a plain unadorned aluminum pole sounds pretty good to me right about now.

I realize that when our kids are old enough to get excited about Christmas, we will have to subscribe to it on some level, but I'd like to create our OWN traditions that are flexible and fun.... A stress-free holiday that the kids can still get hyped up about. We all know that Christmas is no longer Christ-centered (if it ever was), so I don't think our kids will be missing out on the spiritual aspect of Christmas. I believe that we can still use this time of year to honor the birth of Christ without having Santa, lights, and snowmen plastered all over the place.

Some random ideas to add to the normal "Festivus" traditions:

• Instead of froo-froo Christmas stockings, have the kids pick out a couple of their dad's ugliest, most worn out tube socks for mom and dad (not Santa) to fill with goodies.
  


• Have a huge holiday dinner, (I believe the Costanzas had spaghetti) but change it up every year and let the kids help choose what we have. Maybe one year we can have a sushi feast.....and the next, a meal made up of fancy peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. Anything goes.
  


• Since the "Airing of Grievances" seems a little harsh and isn't a very Christ-like thing to be teaching our kids, we can lighten it up a bit by making it non-threatening and funny.....like "I think it's totally gross when little Billy picks his nose and eats his boogers"....
  


• Each year could carry a different theme that the kids help choose. Maybe when the kids are a bit older, we can reward them throughout the year for acts of kindness and good behavior by using some sort of points system. Whoever has the most points at the end of the year gets to choose the Festivus theme. We can put up decorations that coincide with the theme, but they should be inexpensive and, for the most part, homemade.

Just a few ideas.
And of course, at the end of a busy Festivus day, the tired little tots will have a grand old time trying to wrestle daddy to the ground.

Hee hee....yes, more reasons for my family to think I'm weird.

Labels: holidays