Salkin - Festivus: the holiday for the rest of us

Portions of text in this book appeared in different form in Fooey to the World, Festivus Has Come by Allen Salkin. Copyright 2004 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.

Copyright 2005, 2008 by Allen Salkin

Foreword copyright 2005 by Jerry Stiller

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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For Jay and Toby, true jokesters

BY JERRY STILLER

I n the ancient days when gods played their own games, and had their own celebrations, tossing lightning bolts between mountaintops, hurling great bouldersFestivus came out of that. Its a holiday that celebrates being alive at a time when it was hard to be alive.

There was no Christ yet, no Yahweh, no Buddha. There were great ruins and raw nature. But there was a kindling spark of hope among men. They celebrated that great thunderous storms hadnt enveloped them in the past year, that landslides hadnt destroyed them. They made wishes that their crops would grow in the fields, that theyd have food the next year and the wild animals wouldnt attack and eat them.

Theres something pure about Festivus, something primal, raw in the hearts of humans.

And then there is the idea of an aluminum pole, the centerpiece of the modern celebration of Festivus. Airplanes are made out of aluminum to take you through life from one place to anotherin one piece, usually. Aluminum is a type of metal that can say so much if something is done to it, like turning it into an airplane.

But theres nothing to an aluminum pole. It has no feeling. It says, I am what I am. You endow the aluminum pole with whatever you want to. It leaves you open to explore your own meaning. It is lightweight stuff, but in the form of an airplane it gets you from one part of the world to the next. Remember that.

And one more thing on aluminum. You dont want to put too many ms into it. Aluminum is easy to say, but dont think too much before you say it out loud. If you think too much about how you say it before you say it, youll screw it up.

So with these sparks of godly and individual human imagination flying, I say this: A Festivus miracle to me would be not having to give anybody a gift during the time of year we call the holidays, and not feeling like Ive shortchanged anyone or hurt their feelings. The other end of the miracle would be that if I didnt get a gift from someone I expected it from, I wouldnt think, Why didnt they remember me? Nope. Just wipe the slate clean.

I mean, most of the time when you get a gift, you have to prove to the gift-giver how much you loved what they gave you. It takes a toll on you. I receive letters sometimes from people describing every little thing about the gifts Ive sent to them. I dont even remember what I sent! These people should have more in their lives.

Which brings me to wrestling, another centerpiece of Festivus, the feats of strength. Wrestling is raw, primal. With my own son, I used to tumble around. He always used to come out on top for some reason. He was very agile. I let him win, of course.

Snails are primal, too. Its no coincidence there is a snail called Festivus. The snail is the ocean. Earth, wind, fire, water, the essential elements. For Festivus, make it: earth, wind, fire, and snails.

Thats why if Im to air my grievances here, I say: Lets cut this holidays thing. Lets cut it down to the bare minimum.

I am not alone in feeling this way, but very few people will actually say it out loud. Then these things like Festivus come along. Something that makes its way onto a sketch on Seinfeld or Saturday Night Live or another show like that, it comes out of something thats in the air. It resonates and people run with it.

For some people the revelation comes too late that life is best kept to the essentials. Some people are given their last rites and that person might say in their last breath, I should have celebrated Festivus.

Look, Im not trying to be an anticonsumer Jerry the Curmudgeon here. Im a Gucci man, a Prada man, myself. I buy gifts from these stores. People have a right to purchase things if they want to.

All Im saying is, if you celebrate Festivus, you may live a little longer.

You are getting back to the essentials, to the days of gods on mountaintops and howling wolves. Because you are saying the holidays are in the heart, a celebration of being alive with our fellow humans. For that purpose, an aluminum pole will do just as well as anything elseas long as its not stuck in the wrong place.

Everything in this book is 100 percent true. This is all real.

The History Of Festivus

M ost Festivus-friendly people believe the holiday was born December 18,1997, the day the Festivus episode of Seinfeld was first broadcast. Those people are wrong.

Seinfeld, undeniably, presented this unfamiliar holiday in a seductively bitter light.

The TV version of Festivus featured a bare aluminum pole in the place of honor many families reserve for a tinsel-draped Christmas tree, an Airing of Grievances in which friends, family, and acquaintances accused one another of being a disappointment, and Feats of Strength, requiring that the holiday not end until the head of the household was wrestled to the floor and pinned.

Millions of people loved itor at least snickered at the holiday with dark pleasure. Within days of that first airing, some early adopters began celebrating their own versions of Festivus, buying poles at Home Depot, wrestling one another, and airing grievances.

Something about the holidays anti-cheer was delivering an antidote to the tinselly, tee-hee tyranny of forced joviality that rules the modern holidays. Festivus felt right.

But despite what most Seinfeld watchers believed, this was not the first time Festivus had felt right to people. In various forms through the millennia, humans have celebrated holidays called Festivus. A version flourished in ancient Rome. It morphed through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and manifested strangely in nineteenth-century California before flowering again in upstate New York in the 1960s. Whats amazing is that through its many incarnations, Festivus has always uniquely managed to express the spirit of its age just as it does now. No one has ever owned it. It is populist. It adapts. Uncontrolled by any ruling power, Festivus just grows.

Some Festivus-lovers may have a hard time believing that the holiday for the rest of us predates the twentieth century. One hopes these philistines are aware there was civilized life prior to television.

If so, lets briefly (this history lesson will end soonbut history