A Fare Sale for Festivus

As it must to all holidays in America, Festivus is being crassly commercialized.

AirTran Airways, the scrappy Atlanta-based carrier that is planning to merge with Southwest Airlines, today rolled out a Festivus Sale. In fact, there will be 12 days of fare sales.

"Our research shows that high fares are commonly cited in the Festivus Airing of Grievances," explained Tad Hutcheson, AirTran's vice president of marketing and sales.

A quick Google search reveals others are jumping on the Festivus bandwagon too. A company sells Festivus poles, which are the holiday's equivalent of a Christmas tree. The same firm opened a Festivus Pole Lot in Milwaukee several years ago. Café Press markets a line of garish Festivus trinkets, including clothing, greeting cards, and coffee mugs. There are now Festivus websites, Festivus books, and Festivus bumper stickers. Even the family that created Festivus has cashed in by writing a guidebook to the "real" holiday.

And if the Wikipedia entry is to be believed, money-grubbing ice-cream moguls Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have made a seasonal flavor called Festivus. (Of course, they sold their confectionery souls years ago when they peddled Ben & Jerry's to Unilever, one of the world's leading food conglomerates.)

All of this is a long, long way from the stress-free, secular, noncommercial holiday created in 1966 by writer Dan O'Keefe and popularized by his son, Daniel, who wrote about Festivus in a 1997 episode of Seinfeld. As envisioned by O'Keefe pere e fils, Festivus revolved around feats of strength, a meaningful family dinner, a sacred ritual called the "airing of grievances" with family members, and the majestic, unadorned, aluminum Festivus pole.

All that is gone now, supplanted by Festivus airline sales and other blatantly commercial bastardizations of the holiday. What was once "a Festivus for the rest of us" is now no more than a blur of ritualized end-of-the-year spending.

If you still care about its true meaning, Festivus is celebrated on Thursday, December 23.

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