Festivus

Festivus is a nondenominational holiday featured in an episode of Seinfeld, a popular American television sitcom of the 1990s. It was featured on episode number 166 of the show, entitled "The Strike", which first aired on December 18, 1997. Many people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld, now celebrate, in varying degrees of seriousness, the holiday in real life. The definitive book on the holiday Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us by Allen Salkin, with a foreword by Jerry Stiller is coming out 26 October 2005.

Origin

The Festivus idea came to the show through writer Daniel O'Keefe. His father, Dan O'Keefe, had invented a Festivus holiday in 1966, including many of the features later included in Seinfeld. He was inspired in part by the Samuel Beckett play Krapp's Last Tape, whose protagonist tapes himself speaking at different times in his life; the original Airing of Grievances was spoken into a tape recorder, and the O'Keefe family retains some of the tapes. (The father's career as a Reader's Digest editor meant internal politics of that organization are prominently featured; external grievances were permitted.) The O'Keefe tradition did not have a set date, but would take place in response to family tension, "any time from December to May" (Salkin). The phrase "a Festivus for the rest of us" also derived from an O'Keefe family event, the death of the elder O'Keefe's mother. The holiday made it onto Seinfeld after the writing team was amused by O'Keefe's retelling.

Related Topics:
1966 - Samuel Beckett - Krapp's Last Tape - Reader's Digest

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The elder O'Keefe wrote the 1982 book Stolen Lightning: A Social Theory of Magic ISBN 0826400590; the work deals with idiosyncratic ritual and its social significance; a theme with obvious relevance to Festivus.

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