December 23, 2010
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Festivus and HumanLight
Festivus, called a “holiday for the rest of us,” reportedly arose in reaction against the commercialization of Christmas. Traditional Festivus decor is spare: a simple, low-maintenance aluminum Festivus pole. Celebrations include food, drink, feats of strength, and airing of grievances. This sounds like my mother’s family’s gatherings, wherever and whenever they occurred.Festivus might have remained forever confined to one family and their close friends and neighbors, but one member of that family was a writer on the Seinfeld sitcom. Writer Dan O’Keefe said his, “father discovered the holiday in a book published in 1966.”
In an interview published by the New York Time on December 19, 2004, the O’Keefes, elder and younger, said,“It was entirely more peculiar than on the show,” the younger Mr. O’Keefe said from the set of the sitcom “Listen Up,” where he is now a writer. There was never a pole, but there were airings of grievances into a tape recorder and wrestling matches between Daniel and his two brothers, among other rites.
“There was a clock in a bag,” said Mr. O’Keefe, 36, adding that he does not know what it symbolized.
“Most of the Festivi had a theme,” he said. “One was, `Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?’ Another was, `Too easily made glad?’ “
His father, a former editor at Reader’s Digest, said the first Festivus took place in February 1966, before any of his children were born, as a celebration of the anniversary of his first date with his wife, Deborah. The word “Festivus” just popped into his head, he said from his home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
The holiday evolved during the 1970′s, when the elder Mr. O’Keefe began doing research for his book “Stolen Lightning” (Vintage 1983), a work of sociology that explores the ways people use cults, astrology and the paranormal as a defense against social pressures.
HumanLight
HumanLight is a secular humanist celebration. My son pointed out to me that it could not be a “holiday” because the root of “holiday” is “holy.” He’s correct. “Holy” does hold connotations related to Divinity, and secular humanists are “good without God.”The celebration was created in 2001 by Joe Fox and Gary Brill, as a positive expression of humanist ideals, including reason, hope, compassion, and a deep concern for human rights and freedoms, human needs and interests.
I do not doubt that secular humanists enjoy gathering to celebrate those ideals, but I cannot help thinking that another factor entered into their motivation for setting up their celebration to coincide with Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Hogmanay, Dwali, and other Winter Solstice festivities: the importuning of envious children, wanting to get in on the gifts.
Comments (3)
i would love to get my hands on one of the old-school aluminum trees with the color wheel. it’d rock my christmas.
happy festivus, kansas friend.
marian
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