by Allen Salkin
• Experience serving in pit crew at drag races
• Ability to fashion her own Miss Festivus sash
Julie comes from a family of beauty pageant winners. Her sister was Miss Fourth of July in Jacksonville, Illinois, in the 1960s, and her niece won Miss Greene County in 1993.
But unlike her forebears, who had to parade their bodies and flaunt their personalities in front of judges to win top honors, Julie decided for herself she was a queen.
Using these un-rules, there need be no wannabe Miss Festivuses. Anyone who feels deserving can buy a sash and crown herself.
“It’s about being well-rounded,” Julie advises future queens. “You’re not just stuck inside the box, you have to try new things and be adventurous.”
Spontaneous Festivi
They didn’t know they were having Festivus in Frankenmuth, Michigan, until they were halfway through it.
One night in December 2001 Elizabeth Zill’s teenage daughter Kelty was whining about the family not having a Christmas tree. She had reason to whine—there were trees all around. In fact, Frankenmuth, population 4,838, is home to Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland, which claims to be the largest Christmas store in the world. Bronner’s, which is across the street from the Zill house, carries more than 150 different types of nutcrackers and sells 1.3 million glass ornaments a year. The store has billboards as far away as Florida, and two million people visit annually.
Elizabeth was sick of Frankenmuth dolling itself up for Christmas. “They start before Halloween,” she gripes. Nor was she was in the mood to shell out $40 for a tree just to please Kelty.
The Zill holiday feast was a fend-for-yourself deal from whatever could be found in the fridge. There was tension. Staring. Grievances about “cheapness.” Countergrievances about how some people could benefit from seeing the wisdom of “thriftiness.” Amanda Morse, Elizabeth’s other daughter, had traveled to the house with her husband and 2-year-old son. The tot started wrestling with a squeeze toy.
It was like an undeclared Festivus was happening.
Kelty kept whining. And then it struck Elizabeth like a frying pan to the noggin, something she’d seen on TV once.
She rushed onto the back porch, grabbed an empty coatrack that had been standing there, dragged it into the living room, and told Kelty, “’This is your Festivus pole. Enjoy it,’” Elizabeth recalls. “Oh my gosh, Kelty didn’t see the humor in it.”
“The rest of us were in tears we were laughing so hard.”
But soon the tension popped and disappeared like a pine needle in a living room fire. Elizabeth strung some lights around the coatrack. A pile of presents formed under it.
Across the street, a permanent seventeen-foot-tall statue of Santa Glaus stared at the Zill home from atop one of the three fake mountains of dirt Bronner’s had built to simulate alps in Frankenmuth.
“It wears on you after a while,” Amanda says. “That coatrack made me immensely happy.”
Elizabeth remembers the accidental Festivus fondly, too. “We’re warped,” she says.
Festivus Yes, Fake Snow No! A Tale of a Cold Festivus at the Office
by Sarah Garland, former staff reporter at a community newspaper
I hated my boss, my coworkers, and my job as a reporter at a weekly newspaper in Queens, New York. More than anything, I hated that the cheap bastards wouldn’t install heat vents in my back office.
Every morning I settled into my desk in the editorial department without removing my hat and scarf. I exchanged my coat for a ragged, grandpa-style sweater and slipped on a pair of gloves with the fingers cut off for typing. With high-pitched Long Island accents, the ladies from sales would occasionally come back to our frigid office lamenting that the lack of heat forced me to dress like a homelss person.
Right at the moment when a well-sharpened pencil plunged into my boss’s aorta was a tempting scenario despite the potential jail time, Festivus came to save me.
A day after Thanksgiving the publisher of the newspaper—a vision in a pastel fur hat and heavy jewels—sailed through the door to announce the commencement of the annual Holiday Decoration Contest.
The salesladies went to work. Soon, twinkling lights, fake snow, and tinsel waved in the stuffy air flowing from the heat vents up front, and I was inspired.
Under a poinsettia that, in the bitter backroom cold, had turned brown and dropped its leaves into a pile none of the reporters bothered to pick up, I taped up a sign in red marker: “Happy Festivus.” Smiles twitched on the faces of the other downtrodden editorial staff. Pictures of the Grinch and Scrooge McDuck were soon tacked up on bulletin boards.
When we were scolded and ordered to take down our decorations, the spirit of Festivus only took stronger hold in my heart. I aired my grievances at my boss, telling her she was stingy and journalistically corrupt. I quit and have been happily freelance-writing, somewhat warm, and relatively grievance-free ever since.
Dad Doug and son Elian Rubin raise the pole in Princeton, New Jersey. “Festivus makes sense,” Doug says.
Festivus at the Office
The need for office workers to enjoy at least one evening a year in which they drink together, complain overly loudly about their superiors, and drunkenly make good on a year’s worth of flirtatiousness by kissing sloppily behind the photocopier will likely continue to necessitate the annual office “holiday” party. What has caused problems in recent years is deciding what to name the party and how to decorate for it. The requirement of complete tolerance of all religions—including no religion—in the workplace has ruled out even the potential triple-inclusiveness of a Hanu-Ghristma-Kwanzaa party.
Enter Festivus. Devoid of religious connection and yet somehow affiliated with the idea of celebrating something or another, Festivus is the perfect nothing that avoids excluding anyone. Plus, it comes with a cheap decorating scheme: Buy a pole, make it stand up, and the party is good to go.
“You know how places are,” says Tatiana Hinosotis, who, as social chair of the Student Engineering Council at the University of Texas at Austin, threw a successful Festivus-themed banquet complete with Grievance Airing and a pole. “They don’t like things with religious connotations.”
Best of all, for many employers, supervisors, and insurers, a Festivus party does without that most feared of all potential sexual-harassment magnets: the office mistletoe.
SECTION 5
The Songs of Festivus
Music
Some Festivus songs, like Festivus parties, are fully realized. Some are mere fragments scrawled in matchbooks and graf-fitied on bathroom stalls. Here is a sampling of all types.
GATHER ‘ROUND THE POLE
Adam Park, the Los Angeles, California-based movie producer who wrote this song, believes it will become the “Jingle Bells” of Festivus.
Gather ‘Round the Pole
Back in eighteen forty-four
The Festivus snail was heard to roar.
That ol’ snail sure caused a fuss.
His roar brought us Festivus.
CHORUS:
Gather ‘round the pole, young wishers.
Gather ‘round to toss your washers.
Gather ‘round the rest of us.
The Time has come for Festivus.
Of Festivus snail they still are talking,
‘Cause Papa Dan one day went walking
Among the hills of old upstate,
Where he found that shell so great.
On the shell was a hieroglyphic
Of a source quite unspecific.
Papa Dan shook to his core.
He blew that shell and heard its roar.
CHORUS
That roar spread across the land.
Silver poles began to stand,
And the people who’d been abstaining
Opened up and began complaining.
He took it home to little Dan,
Who wanted to be like his old man.
When little Dan heard its mighty roar,
He wrestled his dad right to the floor!
CHORUS
MISS FESTIVUS PROCESSIONAL SONG
A newly crowned queen deserves a song. Here’s one that makes sure Miss Festivus gets what she deserves.
Miss Festivus Processional Song
There she is, Miss Festivus.
She’s relatively un-venemous.
She makes us swoon,
She’s no baboon
She is Miss Festivus!
She’s everything we wish we were.
Some extra flesh, that’s for sure.
But we don’t mind,
We love that behind.
She is Miss Festivus!
Four-eyed one, high school was cruel,
They never saw your inner jewel.
But that was bull.
You’re beautiful,
You are Miss Festivus!
INTERLUDE:
(Here announcer extolls the specific virtues of the newly crowned Miss Festivus. For example:)
She once kissed the drummer for the Lemonheads!
She came very close to doing well on her MCAT!
For some reason she calls pants “trousers”!
For a female, she’s reasonably proficient at barbecue!
(back to verses)
Wear your crown, wield your power,
Complain at will, this is your hour.
We know your end,
A new boyfriend.
You are Miss Festivus!
SO GOOD YOU DO NOT SMELL
Sung to the tune of “Waiting Around to Die” by Townes Van Zandt:
Father Festivus
Please don’t come this year
You used to be so down
With your refusal of fake cheer
And your one cauliflower ear
But Festivus can do without you
Now you lousy clown
We said no tinsel
Is that hard to get?
But you would not be swell
You really are a piece of dirt
So good you do not smell
No
So good you do not smell
Festivus songs around the campfire
FESTIVUS DRINKING SONG
Repeat many times to any tune (“Pop Goes the Weasel” works). Start each round with “carrot cake” and before each new verse the next person in line shouts out a new food item to be sung. If the next person cannot come up with a food item quickly, he or she “loses.” If one of the members of the rest of the group cannot remember the new food item while singing the verse, that person “loses.” Sing faster with each verse.
Festivus we bait you
Festivus we berate you
Old carrot cake in the back of the fridge
We wish we hadn’t a ate you
“BABAGANOUSH!”
Festivus we bait you
Festivus we berate you
Old babaganoush in the back of the fridge
We wish we hadn’t a ate you
“MINIATURE RACLETTE PICKLES!” (making the food item as ridiculous as possible is good strategy)
Festivus we bait you
Festivus we berate you
Old miniature raclette pickles in the back of the fridge
We wish we hadn’t a ate you
(etcetera)
THE FESTIV-US FESTIVAL
The promoter of a showcase of underground music in Edmonton, Alberta, decided Festivus was the perfect name to slap on the event. It started as the working title and stuck, explains Jay Cairns. The homage to the holiday didn’t go as far as acquiring a pole. “We didn’t,” says Cairns, “have the stick or whatever.”
O FESTIVUS!
Joe, a member of the Texas National Guard who asked that his last name not be printed, was at a December 23 Festivus party in Dallas when the beer ran dry. “Not a lot of our girlfriends came,” Joe says. “They thought it was silly the same way women think the Three Stooges is silly as opposed to high art.”
The group headed to a downtown bar called Dick’s Last Resort. “We had heard there was going to be some Festivus-celebrating there,” Joe says.
Boy, was there. “A group of six at a table were belting out this Festivus song to the tune of ‘O Canada!’” Joe says. “No one could give me a coherent answer about who wrote it or when or how.” Ever resourceful, the military man scrawled the lyrics down on a scrap of paper.
“I’ve hummed it in the car, but I haven’t performed it since and I probably won’t until next December 23.”
A disciplined man. Here is what Joe took down. Sing to the tune of “O Canada!”
O Festivus!
Our humble holiday.
Serenity Now is our only goal today.
With glowing hearts we see thy shining pole,
No tinsel there to distract our souls!
From far and wide,
O Festivus, to air grievances we’re free.
Thy feats of strength are glorious to me.
Frank Costanza, we tip our hat to thee.
O Festivus, we’ll pin you first, you’ll see.
SECTION 6
Beyond the Festivus Party
Manifestations of Festivus
Festivus lives. It is part of the conversation. Its nothingness has come to mean something.
What is that something? Well, people have started naming cats “Festivus,” if that means anything. Evangelical Christians in North Carolina have tried recruiting the young by calling their Christmas parties Festivus parties. Does that mean anything?
How about the fact that for two years Ben & Jerry’s produced a Festivus flavor of ice cream? Or that someone in Florida installed a Festivus sign next to a nativity scene on the lawn of a government building as a protest? Or that Festivus is the name of a National Football League quarterback’s regimen?
Religion, commerce, sports, politics, pets—it must mean something, right?
THE FESTIVUS HOUSE
It’s Festivus 365 days a year at the Festivus House, a two-story structure with the word permanently mounted across its front, shared by four students at Miami University of Ohio.
As one might imagine, there are hijinx galore.
“One time some raw meat fell out of the freezer,” says resident Tyler Mecham, 21, a senior accounting major. “At the end of the night I was really drunk and picked it up and threw it against the wall as hard as I could and for the whole next day we had hardened raw meat on the wall.”
The substance spilled on the steps of the Festivus House at Miami University was not identifiable
There is a tradition at Miami, located in Oxford, Ohio, of students naming their houses, usually using puns and references to activities undergraduates find important: Genital Hospital, Boot ‘n’ Rally, and Octopussy are three recent house names.
“Festivus” was born of a desire to be different. Execution was cheap. “We got some plywood, painted it with spray paint in the colors,” says housemate Josh Fawley, 21, pausing his video football game to chat with a visitor. “Then Joe went up into the attic and we tied some rope to the sign and he pulled it up. It was an adventure.”
“We had a Festivus pole out front,” Josh continues, nodding toward the front door from his perch on a black leather sofa. “It was stuck in the ground. It blew over.”
No one has stuck it back in the ground. Likewise, the lads strung lights on the Festivus sign for a party in the spring, but the “F” blinked out soon after and hasn’t been fixed. “Fixing the ‘F’ will be tough,” Tyler says. “There’s a bees’ nest up there.” A typical day in the Festivus House might start with Tyler feeding his phosphorescent fish Ray Ray and Georgia. “They glow under a black light,” he boasts.
Later, Tyler and Joe will pick up their guitars and practice the songs “Chasing Amnesia” and “Better When You’re Gone” that they play in their band named Bell. Nighttime will find Joe lying on his single bed with a plaid bedspread on it, staring at a poster of two young women in white jeans. “He fo
und that poster,” Josh says. “We don’t know who the girls are.”
Festivus miracles don’t always come when wished for in the rickety white-shingled house on East Sycamore Street.
“One time,” Tyler says, “we shot the fire extinguishers off all around the house, but we had to leave the house because then you couldn’t breathe.”
Although the men of Festivus House feel a rush of pride on those almost daily occasions when someone rolls down a window and shouts “Happy Festivus!” while driving past, they find some of the comme of passersby confusing.
“It’s weird,” Tyler says during a break in studying. “I was walking down the sidew near the house the other day and I heard someone say, ‘rather live in the dorm n year than that sh––h Festivus. It has to be worst house on campus Tyler pauses. “We m have had a bunch of trash out. I don’t know.”
Where Joe dreams
FESTIVITIS
Brett Fischer, a physical trainer whose facility in Phoenix attracts NFL and Major League Baseball players in the off-season, named the brutal 25- to 30-minute circuit of running and twisting exercises he sets up every Friday “Festivus.” “The word has taken on a new meaning,” Brett explains. “It’s a conglomeration of a workout regiment, a festival-like attitude, and Seinfeldthrown in.”
The workout, consisting of a series of 5- to 6-second Feats of Strength, is tough. “Some guys have puked,” Brett says.
Festivitis
T-shirt made by Jake Plummer of the Denver Broncos
With such a reputation, many athletes choose to skip Fridays at Fischer Sports. Brett invented a word for the disease of not showing up Fridays: “Festivitis.”
Those who refuse to come down with a case of it include Jake Plummer, the quarterback of the Denver Broncos. He showed up one Friday with T-shirts he’d had printed that he gave to anyone who completed the course. The T-shirts read, “Festivus Won’t Get the Bestivus.”
FESTIVUS FELINES
Festivus has become a popular cat name. Here are the stories of Festivus, Microfestivus, and Festy, each told by their owners.
The Happy Tale of Festivus
(with some magic realism at the end)