Eight Feet Deep

Today is the day we — EFD — cel­e­brate Festivus.

Here is a very short syn­op­sis about Fes­tivus and more can be read in this pretty good Wikipedia arti­cle:

Fes­tivus is a made-up hol­i­day intro­duced to the world on Dec. 18, 1997 on the incred­i­ble late 20th cen­tury sit­com “Sein­feld.” The hol­i­day is just one more gift to soci­ety given by the genius come­dian Jerry Sein­feld and his writ­ers. A line of such cul­tural gifts from Sein­feld and cast exists, like “close talker,” “regift­ing” and “Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that.” The date on which it is cel­e­brated was por­trayed on the show as Dec. 23. The premises of Fes­tivus, as explained by char­ac­ter Frank Costanza — father of one of the main char­ac­ters George Costanza — was a reac­tion to the hyper-commercialization of Christmas.

The major sym­bol for the hol­i­day is an alu­minum pole. Tra­di­tional prac­tices include “Feats of Strengths” and the “Air­ing of Griev­ances,” in which each per­son tells the oth­ers present how they dis­ap­pointed him or her that year.

Prob­a­bly no one knows, but Fes­tivus is actu­ally cel­e­brated by peo­ple in real­ity. There are three Fes­tivus Face­book groups with more than 15,000 fans. Just what those num­bers mean, I couldn’t begin to tell you.

Since this is a hol­i­day that really lacks any rigid­ity it is a per­fect one for me to cel­e­brate. I don’t even have an alu­minum pole this Fes­tivus, but I might go out and find one. Although you can buy a Fes­tivus pole online, I think it kind of defeats the pur­pose of thumb­ing one’s nose to com­mer­cial­ism. No offense Festivuspole.com.

Peo­ple throw stuff away left and right, includ­ing alu­minum poles. That is espe­cially true in places where hur­ri­canes seem to strike every third week and folks are con­tin­u­ally rebuild­ing their homes when they aren’t fight­ing the insur­ance com­pa­nies in court.

And for those of you who read my blog, or even worse, know me per­son­ally, you know that I have no short­ages of griev­ances to air. No one says the griev­ances one airs must nec­es­sar­ily be pointed toward friends or fam­ily. So here are just a few of my griev­ances for this year:

Peo­ple who park their huge-a** trucks or SUVs across more than one park­ing space. Do these peo­ple think that because they have a large auto­mo­bile it enti­tles them to park how­ever they desire? Or are they just stu­pid? Espe­cially dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son when park­ing spaces at malls or other shop­ping areas are cru­cial, one should grasp the idea that park­ing spaces are there for a rea­son. A space isn’t there to make you con­form to society’s rules. It is there to ensure every­one who can grab a space has a place to park. That is so these poten­tial cus­tomers can buy things and the shop­keep­ers or large cor­po­ra­tions can get filthy rich! Oh no, this rant has just gone South Pole with my mus­ings return­ing to com­mer­cial­ism. I have just run myself into a lit­er­ary cir­cle of no return.

Well, that’s it. I have other griev­ances but instead of air­ing a few I just hit a dead end thanks to com­merce. Screw it. It’s time to enjoy the hol­i­day before the hol­i­day (before the hol­i­day if you cel­e­brate Box­ing Day on Dec. 26.)

Oh I for­got the Feats of Strength. I think I will pass on that this year.

Have a great Fes­tivus and you know what you can do with the pole.