List Price: $12.95Price: $4.90 You Save: $8.05 (62%)as of 11/22/2009 02:05 EST
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Binding: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: November 01, 2005
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
It's beginning to look a lot like Festivus!
From the Seinfeld writer and co-creator of the holiday that's becoming a world-wide cult phenomenon.
Beginning on December 23rd and ending sometime in May (if revelers are still into it), Festivus is becoming one of America's most revered secular-if peculiar-holidays. Since making its public debut in 1997 on Seinfeld, Festivus is finally fully explained in the definitive guide to its bare-bones celebration of second-rate miracles and hopeless regrets.
Discover the Festivus traditions:
Gather Round the Festivus Pole: A latter-day addition to festivus celebrations, traditionally a simple aluminum pole. While tinsel is strictly forbidden, non-threatening decorations are permitted within reason.
The Airing of Grievances: At the Festivus dinner table (spaghetti, meatloaf, whatever) participants inform family and friends of the ways in which they've been a disappointment.
The Feats of Strength: Customarily Festivus is over when the head of the family is wrestled to the ground and pinned. (Either participant may decline if they have something better to do.) Conceivably this whole thing could be stretched out until sometime in May.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
If you're a Seinfeld fan you know all about Festivus, the faux holiday that was invented by George Costanza's father Frank:
Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!
In the Seinfeld episode ("The Strike"), the celebration of Festivus involves an aluminum pole, feats of strength, and a ritual airing of grievances. It is not, at least in George's view, an occasion of celebration, but rather a holiday to be endured. The idea of Festivus has nonetheless leapt from the small screen into the popular imagination. Need a Festivus pole for your own real-life celebration? You can buy a six-foot floor model online.
As it turns out, Festivus did not spring fully formed from the heads of Seinfeld's writers. It sprang from the imagination of Daniel O'Keefe Sr., the father of one of those writers. The O'Keefe family actually celebrated Festivus annually during the 1970's and 80's while Dan O'Keefe and his two younger brothers were growing up. But as the author explains in The Real Festivus, the holiday they observed was rather different from--if no less bizarre than--the celebration popularized on television:
"Though only a family of five originally celebrated Festivus, these days it is celebrated by literally dozens of prisoners, college students, and bored people in rural areas across this great nation. And some crappier nations like Canada and Uruguay. And God bless them all and keep them from rape and thresher accidents. But they're doing it all wrong."
In this record-straightening book, O'Keefe explains the genesis of Festivus, its symbols (a clock and a bag, but no pole) and rituals. Festivus was celebrated (irregularly, with no set date) with depressing music and the recitation of poetry and the ingestion of meat. There were strange hats and coarse political statements. Each year one or more themes were assigned to the holiday. (In 1977, for example, the theme was, "Are We Depressed? Yes!") But the most important element of Festivus was the annual tape recording. More than half of this book is taken up with a transcription of some of those Festivus tapes--jokes and pronouncements and embarrassing family secrets and summaries of the family's history since the last recording.
Do these transcripts make for interesting reading? Well, not per se. We readers are like outsiders peering through the O'Keefe's windows. The boys are teasing one another, their mother sitting to the side, for the most part quiet. Their father is hamming it up in front of the cassette recorder, now speaking German, now breaking into song, now declaiming in some more or less meaningful pidgin Romance language. Most of the jokes are lost on us, but we can appreciate the atmosphere within. And so the Festivus transcripts, if not riveting, wind up providing us with a surprisingly intimate portrait of a family, its members intelligent and deeply odd, playful but mutually supportive.
In his humorous introduction to The Real Festivus Jason Alexander (George Costanza on Seinfeld) says of the book that it is "a shameless attempt to cash in on an international phenomenon. It is airport or bathroom reading at its best." Which is true enough. But it's also mildly informative and funny and charmingly written and brief. Recommended, in short, for the Seinfeld aficionado.
-- Debra Hamel
Rating:  -
As a fan of Seinfeld, I snagged this book in a bookstore outlet because of its obvious Seinfeld connection. I had hoped to learn more about the show or more about that episode, but such was not to be found in this book. To his credit, the author is extremely clear about the premise. This book is an obvious attempt to cash-in on the popularity of Seinfeld, but it quickly departs from any Seinfeld connections and enters the bizarre world of the O'Keefe family.
In short, the Festivus concept that appeared in one Seinfeld episode originated with the O'Keefe family. The author of this book was a writer for Seinfeld who introduced the idea into a script. The script for that episode took on a life of its own and quickly left the actual holiday that the O'Keefe family celebrated, so this book brings it back to that real, fake holiday.
Quite honestly, I didn't think that the book was very funny. The author is relatively clever, but his writing style is overly conversational and often profane. To be sure, there were a few laugh-out-loud moments, but they were too rare.
The worst part of the book is the transcripts. One of the hallmarks of the O'Keefe Festivus celebration was recording their conversations about the holiday. Much of this book is the actual transcripts of those recordings. Though this was probably a hoot for the O'Keefe family to relive, it just didn't resonate with me as interesting, funny, or worthwhile.
Ultimately, this book was a disappointment. Had I read the book jacket and description more closely, I could have discovered this fact. If you want to learn more about Seinfeld, this book won't do it. If you want to learn about the strange fake holiday that a random family celebrated in the 1970's and 1980's that ultimately inspired a general concept for a Seinfeld episode, then this is the book for you!!
Rating: -
Most of the book is taken up with the family transcripts of their Festivus celebration. Lots of inside jokes and stories that are just not that amusing to read. Who wants to watch some other family's home movies, you know? I appreciate the history of Festivus, it was an interesting look into this family, but the book was not worth $12.95 and if you can buy any other book, buy something else. It's just not worth it.
Rating:  -
...in a velvet bag. Short, but well written. Hilarious. Buy it now. I'm serious, stop thinking about it. Buy it. Now.
Rating: -
"The Real Festivus" is written by the man who came up with the general idea for the Festivus theme in the Seinfeld episode. The writer came up with the idea from his own life when his father had somewhat of a holiday that was neither Christmas nor anything in between. On top of that, there are only a few similarities that can be made from this real life holiday and the festivus we saw on TV. Those few connections are distant at best. For instance, Festivus had no actual date and wasn't even near Christmas, but took place some time in a 6 or 7 month period.
The book reads more like a history book recording a strange holiday that was celebrated by only a few select people. There aren't many funny stories or commical observations, rather it's one man's telling of how he came up with the idea of a new holiday on a hit TV series.
If you're looking for a book that makes you chuckle, I'm afraid this isn't it. although if all you want is a quick read and know a little trivia about the "real" festivus, it may be worth the time.
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