I know I’m a day late, but what the heck. What’s Festivus you ask? I’ll let Wikipedia explain:
Festivus is an annual holiday created by writer Dan O’Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a scriptwriter for the TV show Seinfeld. Many people now celebrate the holiday on December 23, as depicted on the December 18, 1997 Seinfeld episode “The Strike.” According to O’Keefe, the name Festivus “just popped into his head.”
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 or 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, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode. Some people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld, now celebrate the holiday in varying degrees of seriousness; the spread of Festivus in the real world is chronicled in the book Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us.
JC emailed me yesterday with the idea for a Festivus column. Because of the Airing of the Grievances it seems a perfect column for Mark Teixeira.
Dear Mark Teixeira,
You’re a piece of overhyped shit. I hope you get into a motorcycle accident and have inoperable knee problems that put you prematurely out of baseball. I hope the New York media suffocates you and you can’t deal with the stress and need to demand a trade that the Yankees can’t accommodate ibecause you’re batting .263 with 3HR and 21 RBI’s and they overpaid for you. Congratulations, you’ve now eclipsed Gay-Rod as the most hated Yankee.
-Jay’s Sports Blog
For everyone else, Happy Festivus!
