Festivus2029 Countdown

About Festivus

Festivus is a tongue-in-cheek holiday celebrated on December 23 as an alternative to the pressures and commercialism of the Christmas season. Its motto is a Festivus for the rest of us, and its centerpiece is an unadorned aluminum pole, chosen precisely because it has no glowing, glittering anything.

The holiday was created in 1966 by writer Dan O'Keefe, whose son later worked on Seinfeld and brought it to television in a famous 1997 episode. From there it escaped fiction and became a real, if ironic, tradition. Classic rituals include the Airing of Grievances, in which diners tell friends and family all the ways they have been disappointed over the past year, and the Feats of Strength, which ends only when the head of the household is pinned. Fans often declare ordinary good luck a Festivus miracle.

Underneath the jokes sits a genuinely appealing idea: a low-cost, low-stress gathering where honesty is the only gift required.

History of Festivus

The original Festivus was invented by Dan O'Keefe, an editor at Reader's Digest, who held the first one in February 1966 to mark the anniversary of his first date with his wife; the date later drifted to December 23. Family lore mixed invented rituals with a real metal pole that reportedly came up from the family basement. When O'Keefe's son Daniel became a television writer on Seinfeld, he folded the holiday into the 1997 episode The Strike, featuring Frank Costanza's explosive attempt to build a December alternative. The episode struck a chord with anyone exhausted by holiday obligations. Since then, grievances have been aired in offices, blogs, and even state capitols, and aluminum pole sales quietly spike every December.

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