When is Festivus?
In “Seinfeld,” Festivus is celebrated annually on December 23, right before the Christmas holiday Frank was so fed up with.
How is Festivus celebrated?
Festivus is celebrated as a no-frills dinner—they eat meatloaf in the “Seinfeld” episode—and involves a few zany traditions. Instead of a decorated tree or other holiday staples, there’s an aluminum Festivus pole—with no decoration. In the episode, Frank calls tinsel “distracting.”
The opening ritual is the “Airing of Grievances,” when you “gather your family around and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year,” according to Frank.
The holiday also features a “Feats of Strength,” in which Frank and George wrestle until Frank is pinned, thus ending the celebration. “It was another kind of way with dealing with something else that was going on at the time: the rebelliousness of the son against the father and the father trying to prove he was still stronger than the son,” Stiller told The New York Times in 2004.
What inspired Festivus?
“Seinfeld” launched Festivus into mainstream pop culture, but one of the show’s writers really did grow up celebrating a version of the holiday. Dan O’Keefe drew inspiration for the episode from a family tradition his father, Daniel O’Keefe, started in 1966. The original Festivus was a celebration of the anniversary of the elder O’Keefe’s first date with his wife, but the tradition grew and changed as their children were born.
“It was entirely more peculiar than on the show,” Dan told The New York Times. Although there was never a Festivus pole at the O’Keefes’, the family aired their grievances into a tape recorder and sibling wrestling matches ensued.
Do people really celebrate Festivus?
Small Festivus parties have popped up ever since “Seinfeld” introduced the holiday in the late ’90s, though how close people have adhered to its traditions varies. In some cases, it serves as a funny theme for a holiday gathering. “Festivus describes whatever it is people want to celebrate,” author Allen Salkin writes in Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us.
There have been high-profile observances, too. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has been marking the holiday since 2013. His strings of complaints on Twitter (now X) grew into an annual “Festivus Report” that details government spending he deems wasteful. He calls it his “Airing of (spending) Grievances.”
In 2013, a man named Chaz Stevens gained attention for building a Festivus pole made of beer cans inside the Florida state Capitol. Two years later, he took Festivus to a new level by erecting rainbow Festivus poles at a handful of state capitals to celebrate victories for LGBTQ+ rights—and air his grievances with people made uncomfortable by his decorations.
