A Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Festivus is an annual holiday that was made popular by writer and editor Daniel O'Keefe. It was introduced to popular culture by O'Keefe's son Daniel (who also wrote the definitive guide), a scriptwriter for the TV show Seinfeld, on December 18th 1997, in the episode "The Strike". (Season 9, Episode 10). The holiday is celebrated each year on December 23rd, but many people celebrate it at other times, often to avoid the Christmas rush. The holiday includes novel practices such as the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him/her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the "Feats of Strength" are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, the holiday only ending if the head of the household is actually pinned.
Some people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld, now celebrate the holiday, in varying degrees of seriousness; some carefully following rules from the TV show or books, others humorously inventing their own versions.






There are a few other books written about Festivus... but they seem to be fictitious works, or works based on the original book.

a factory in Milwaukee that makes real Festivus Poles!

Festivus" was the name of a seasonal Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor made in 2000 and 2001 in honor of the holiday. In 2004, the flavor made its return as "Gingerbread Cookie", and has since been retired to the Ben and Jerry's Flavor Graveyard.

Oklahoma-based winery, Grape Ranch, began producing Festivus wine in 2003

Even Religious Tolerance . org has gotten into the act!

Professor Anthony Aveni of Colgate University, author of "The Book of the Year: A Brief History of our Seasonal Holidays" 7 suggests that Festivus is infused with so much potential meaning that it may become a permanent part of the American holiday firmament. He notes that Halloween was once an obscure festival observed by few, that Kwanzaa was invented by an academic in the 1960s, and Hanukkah has evolved in recent years to include the exchange of gifts. He said: "Even Christmas comes out of a Pagan holiday that happened around the [winter] solstice."

By the way - all of this is completely different from Chrismukkah: is a pop-culture neologism referring to the merging of the holidays of Christianity's Christmas and Judaism's Hanukkah as celebrated in interfaith households where one parent may be of Christian heritage and another parent of Jewish heritage. Chrismukkah was invented by FOX television program The O.C.. On the show, the character Seth Cohen has a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. As a way to merge the two faiths, Seth claims to have "created Chrismukkah."