Festivus (7 page)
Moving south, a group in Missouri asks everyone at their party to write down a grievance on a piece of paper and then stuff it inside the Festivus pole. At the end of the night, the pole, made of cardboard painted silver, is broken open like a piÑata, papers spill out like candy, and the grievances are read aloud.
Grievance Examples
Some of these were against the world, some against enemies, some against “stupid people,” and some against people’s own damn selves. At Festivus gatherings around the planet, they were shouted, scrawled in dry-erase pens on refrigerators, entered into permanent ledgers, pasted on poles, and posted on Web sites.
I want this house to be decluttered—and I want you to get rid of all these ridiculous stuffed tigers!
—D
OUG
R
UBIN
T
O HIS WIFE IN
P
RINCETON
, N
EW
J
ERSEY
My brother brakes my video games.
—A
NONYMOUS,
N
EW
O
RLEANS
I don’t give a crap how much it sucks to be handicapped, a $200 fine for using a handicapped spot illegally is way, way out of line.
—B
ILL
D
ENNIS’S BLOG AT
WWW.PEORIAPUNDIT.COM
sponge-hockey team.
Hoser, your girth is seriously slowing down the sponge-hockey team.
—C
REG
P
ASEHNIK
, W
INNIPEG,
ONTARIO
I think candy canes suck, and wish that every fool that buys a cup of [coffee] . . . at $4 at pop would spill it on their laps and destroy their reproductive organs (it’s my belief that stupidity is inherited).
—
POST BY SOMEONE WITH THE SCREEN NAME
J
OE
K
APPA ON THE
F
ESTIVUS FORUM AT THE
S
EINFELD
F
AN
W
EB SITE
WWW.STANTHECADDY.COM
Laura: Is “BlueMoon” really the best pseudonym you could come up with?
The federal government ran a record $413 billion budget deficite for the fiscal year 2004. Congress responded by passing the bloated 205 omnibus budget package that was bursting with more than 11,000 pork projects. The House of Representatives shot down budget reform with the defeat of the Spending Control Act of 2004.
—C
ITIZENS
A
GAINST
G
OVERNMENT
W
ASTE ADVOCACY GROUP
“T
AXPAYERS
C
ELEBRATE
F
ESTIVUS!” PRESS RELEASE
, D
ECEMBER 22, 2004
The Burnham Plaza Theater—your place is a dump and has been for five years.
—CHICAGOIST.COM
A
IRING OF
G
RIEVANCES.
D
ECEMBER 23, 2004
(A
COMMENT OF THIS WAS POSTED BY A “RACHELLE” LATER THAT DAY:
“W
E OVER AT
C
HICAGO
M
ET
B
LOG
COULD TOTALLY PIN YOU
C
HICAGOIST
W
USSIES.
“)
Motorists who leave top hats of snow on their car roofs are lazy. The entire sheet of snow can slide off, land on the person behind you or hit their windshield like an exploding mattress.
—M
AREK
F
UCHS
,
WHO AIRED HIS
F
ESTIVUS GRIEVANCES IN A
M
ARCH 2005
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
PIECE
“N
OW
I
S THE
W
INTER OF A
M
ALCONTENT
“
“Mom, given all the time you spent ignoring me as a child, I cannot believe you still have the nerve to demand that I drive ten hours one way to eat Christmas dinner with you in a truck stop because you are too damn lazy to cook and still can’t accept that I am capable of cooking the damn meal myself.”
—A
NONYMOUS POST ON FESTIVUSBOOK.COM,
D
ECEMBER 17, 2007
“To my throat-clearing co-worker: I hate it when you constantly clear your throat. I hate when you refuse a mint or a cough-drop. You are just an annoyance. Would you please do us all a favor and just stop? You are an inconsiderate ass . . .”
—A
NONYMOUS POST ON FESTIVUSBOOK.COM
, D
ECEMBER 22, 2007
“Tara, it’s espresso . . . not expresso!!!”
—A
NONYMOUS POST ON FESTIVUSBOOK.COM,
S
EPTEMBER 14, 2007
“People that have to ask again and again when we are going to have kids: If we are (which we aren’t) it’s none of your damn business! Do we want to discuss it with you? Um, no. Do we need to talk about why? No. Leave it alone!”
—A
NONYMOUS POST ON FESTIVUSBOOK.COM
, D
ECEMBER 25, 2007
At Krista Soroka’s bash in Tampa, a fake-leather ledger book waits on a side table. Guests approach and enter grievances in it all night long: gripes about the injustice of Ronnie getting a girlfriend, the engorged size of the New York Yankees payroll, the pathetic state of Florida’s interstate road system and “the worst power grid ever.” The book is kept year-round on Soroka’s coffee table for visitors to mull over.
GRIEVANCES VS. FLATTERY!
Most nontraditional Airing of Grievances methods hew to the traditional idea of allowing people to unmitigatingly spew disappointment. But New Orleans, always roiling with spooky contradictions, figured out how to both celebrate and undermine the AOG.
At Festivus, The Holiday Market for the Rest of Us, first held in December 2004 on Magazine Street, attendees were invited to write grievances on slips of paper and affix them to a Festivus pole. Hundreds of people aired complaints like: “ Don’t call me to place an order unless you actually know what you want!” “I hate the NOPS Payroll Dept,” “I singed off my eyebrows,” and “Why does my roommate insist on singing opera at all times?”
SPACE TO GRIEVE
If you are not the owner of this book, please write at least one grievance on the next page about the owner. If you are the owner, write complaints about your cheap friends who, for instance, are always borrowing your books and not returning them.
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A betogaed Carlos Almendarez of San Francisco worships his foil-sheathed totem.
In another homage to
Seinfeld,
the Holiday Market featured a “regifting station” where items including chipped vases and a shadow box display of golf tchotchkes were dropped off and free to anyone who wanted them. “Tags explained the history of each item,” says Renee Allie, who had the paid position of Festivus Coordinator. “That stuff kept moving. The table was small and there was stuff all over it.”
Among the fifty local vendors actually selling things, there was a booth from the Native American Houma tribe, where flower pins made from gar fish scales were for sale. The gar, which has a mouth lined with needlelike fangs, is like the ancient Roman saperda: nasty. So that much was within Festivus tradition.
What might not sit so well with Festivus fundamentalists (those who believe the
Seinfeld
text of Festivus is meant to be taken literally and no embellishment is allowed), was the Festivus market’s Flattery Booth, held in a colorful tent named the Office of Homeland Serenity. Here, eight “Festivus Flatterers” were assigned to shower one minute of praise on anyone who requested it. “They said things like, ‘You look fabulous,’” Allie says. “One flatterer played a ukulele and sang improv songs about people.”
The fundamentalists can take heart. Bootlicking lost out to bitching; while about 180 people asked for flattery during the six-day event, more than 400 aired grievances.
16-YEAR-OLD KYLAH AND HER FRIENDS AIR GRIEVANCES
Kylah Eide and her friends love Festivus. They do it more than once a year. They used to gather in the Eides’ living room in Timmons, Ontario, until her mother got sick of Festivus and forbade it in the house. Recent Festivi have taken place outside in the snow. They use a vacuum cleaner as their pole, the only option they can afford on their allowance-based incomes. They burn tinsel. Then they grieve. Oh how they grieve.
The Grievances My Friends and I Said to one Another
by Kylah Eide
“Courtney, you are a terrible sister. You’re the dumbest one in your class and think you’re better than everyone. I expected so much more than what you have become.” (Courtney was about 6 years old at the time, by the way) [sister’s name changed]
“When we’re writing a script, you always tell everyone that you came up with my ideas.”
“Your hair is disgusting.”
“You wear your pants too low.”
“You’re terrible at basketball. Stop playing for my team.”
“I’ve never looked at your back without seeing a thong.”
“We know you lie about being a natural blond.”
“You have hair sticking out of your nose.”
“Your boyfriend’s generally unattractive.”
“I slept with your wife.”
“Chris, even though you chew gum and everything, we can still smell your breath. So don’t stand so close to us when you talk.”
Courtney did not take it well when her sister told her she was the dumbest girl in first grade
“Stop laughing at your own jokes.”
“You write bad poetry.”
“We know you listen to techno.”
We were starting to run out of bad things to say to each other. So we started pretending that we had other guests by doing intrepretations of them. For example, I remember telling John in my grandma’s voice, “John, your pants are too long. You can’t see your nice shoes!” and then making it more of a general grandmother’s complaint: “I don’t like Alanis Morrissette. Her hair is too stringy,” and “I like Celine Dion, but she’s a wretched-looking thing,” and “Boys who have dreadlocks will murder you in the streets!”