Festivus Coverage

If you're a Seinfeld fan, you already know about Festivus. It's held on December 23rd. No tree, just an aluminum pole. And what's not to like about a holiday that includes the annual airing of grievances and feats of strength. It seems like Festivus has had a lot of coverage this season.

The Miami Herald covers a local college student's Festivus celebration:

Casuso, along with her friends and co-workers from the Gamestop store she manages, will gather round the pole and air their grievances.

"I plan on telling someone, maybe a certain boyfriend, 'I hate that you pay more attention to your video games than to me,'" she says, laughing. "And to my employees who show up, I plan to say, 'You disappoint me every time I ask you to put away the games and you don't listen.' And I'll tell my stepbrother, 'I hate sharing the bathroom with you'."

and the business of selling Festivus poles:

"That first year we sold about 250 poles, mostly to people who found us on the Web," Leto says. "The following year, orders were up so much that people were ordering them to the tune of 23 an hour online, and paying up to $200 the day before Festivus in order to get overnight delivery so they'd have them in time."

In Chicago, in an apparent attempt to distract people from the all-Blagojevich-all-the-time news coverage, someone installed a Festivus pole in the state Capitol building.

Funny, but nobody's laughing much about the Festivus pole that popped up under the dome of the Illinois Capitol this week.

Not the people who set up the nearby nativity scene.

"I think it's a mockery," said Dan Zanoza, chairman of the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee.

Not the atheists who set up their own Capitol display.

"If the state's going to create a forum for religion at this time of year, which we do not approve of, this is what's going to happen," said Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation.

Even the 18-year-old who created the pole isn't laughing much. State workers, he gripes, set it up too far out of the way for anyone to see.

"I'm halfway thinking about complaining about the location," Michael Tennenhouse said.

Finally, our nation's capitol is in on the act.

Culturally diverse Adams Morgan is about 2 miles north of the White House. Members of its business group hung a banner, "A Festivus for the Rest of Us," at Columbia Road and 18th Street NW. They included notepads, pushpins and pens Friday and waited to see what would happen, Barden said.

The response was phenomenal.

There are the ones that are just plain funny, Seinfeldian observances about stuff too small to talk about with your friends but big enough to put the nasty in your day:

"A pair of leggings is not pants"

"My office mate snorts"

"I hate it when my husband cuts his toenails in bed! UGH!"

It's a time to rant about those picayune, urban tribulations. On her lunch hour, Mara Veraar, 30, scribbled her way to catharsis.

"I see a dead rat on my way to work every day," she wrote. Then, she said, explaining further: "It's not the same rat. It's a different rat. Every. Single. Day."

There, doesn't that feel better.