The Real Festivus

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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What’s The Real Festivus About?

It’s right there in the subtitle, isn’t it? It’s “The True Story Behind America’s Favorite Made-up Holiday.”

In this book you will learn, should you choose, how to celebrate Festivus according to the true and ancient traditions that have guided it since its birth back in the mists of the 1960s. But be warned: the secrets of this book can be dangerous. Do not read it while driving a car; that would be a bad idea. Do not use it to hold down important papers on a desk; it is flimsy and your papers may blow away. If you handle it carelessly, you may sustain paper cuts that are not only painful, but may attract sharks while swimming at the beach. Also, the way things are going in this country, reading books might soon lead to your arrest and a one-way black helicopter ride to some kind of orbital prison, or forced labor on an undersea kelp farm. Depending on the judge you get.

Why is there a need for this book? Well, O’Keefe addresses that right off the bat with his opening words:

So you think the holiday known as Festivus involves a metal pole, do you? Feats of strength? Commercial breaks? WRONG. That’s just the television version. Because a network audience couldn’t possibly have handled the real thing. A family huddled around a table by candle-light one random evening a year, eating and drinking too much, singing in German about a black pig, bitching about people who didn’t like them into a barely functional tape recorder, and displaying obscene, hand-scrawled signs of a political nature.

But if you go beyond simple belief, if you are one of those lost souls who, captivated by the television portrayal of Festivus, actually celebrates the damn thing… what’s up with that? Don’t get out of the house much, do you? Maybe you should get a pet or a hobby or something.* If you don’t already have forty cats in your studio apartment, which will eat your eyes when you die, alone.

*Hard not to take that personally…

He starts with the need for Festivus (a quick critique of some of the major holidays); then moves into the name and what it could mean; its origin; common misconceptions about the holiday (i.e., the Seinfeld episode); and some of the details about the holiday: the floating date, the poems, music, dinner, and gifts; he then details some particular commemorations of the day; and then spends a few paragraphs detailing what the reader needs to pull off an “authentic” Festivus celebration to wrap it up.

So, what did I think about The Real Festivus?

This is not at all what I expected. Sure, I knew the TV version didn’t match up with the O’Keefe family version exactly. But just how little overlap there was (basically: the name) astounded me.

Once you get past the kvetching about the TV Show’s version of Festivus (which seems a little heavy-handed, I have to say, but I think he was going for funny), what this book really is becomes clear. It’s a memoir about an eccentric family’s equally eccentric ritual. Every family has them—the O’Keefes were just nice enough to record them and have one son who achieved enough notoriety to get a publisher to pay for these memories (and the skill to deliver them).

It’s an amusing book infused with a particular kind of sweetness. I don’t know that it’s the kind of thing that will change my Festivus celebrations in the future (I really like the pole), but it’s a rewarding read.