Free Festivus by Allen Salkin Page B

TV when I heard the top part of “Heart and Soul” being played on the piano. The rest of my family had gone to Grandma’s, so I got really nervous. When the tune changed to “Ode to Joy” I realized that if it was a robber or someone else bad, they wouldn’t be letting me know that they were there.
    I crept to the den. I jumped into the room. I was stunned. Festivus was on the piano.
    She jumped off and went out the window. The last I heard of her, she was in Orlando, entertaining tourists in Disney World.
    The Sad Tale of Microfestivus
    by Brittany’s mom, Cathy Benson
    Microfestivus, daughter of Festivus, came into the world on Memorial Day weekend 2001. Festivus was not a very good mother, much too young to be a mom and so fat already that we knew not her pregnant state until we found a kitten in the dog crate.
    I am sad to say that Brittany and I took better care of the kitten than Festivus did. Festivus would yowl to the tiny kitty and Microfestivus would run to her only to be wrestled and boxed by her mother. Alas, Micro never got over her mother’s rejection and became always the rebel. Perhaps Microfestivus was doomed from the start trying to live up to her name and her mother’s giant shadow. She was a long-haired tortie cat with a dainty face and sweet nature. We never knew who the father was.
    Microfestivus met her demise on the road below our home when the milk truck—a tanker with a semi pulling it—knocked her off in spring 2004 on the way to our neighbor’s dairy farm. She knew no boundaries and her complaint with the milk truck was her downfall. You cannot wrestle with a big rig pulling a tanker down a winding country road. May she rest in peace.
    The Indifferent Tale of Festy
    by Scott Kirschner of Norwalk, Connecticut
    We adopted Festy, a feral cat, January 1, 2002. along with her brother Plato. She is fluffy. Her full name was Festivus, which had come from the
Seinfeld
show, and we’re big fans, so we kept it. But we call her “Festy.” Plato had a dumb name before: Hiccup. It was really affecting his self-worth.

    Festy
    Although Festy is a dainty little princess, she can be aggressive and pick fights with her brother. One of their favorite games is “Kitty NASCAR,” where they run and chase each other from one floor, down the front stairs, across the lower floor, then up the back stairs over and over.
    Although the cats are mostly indoors and don’t hunt, my girlfriend thinks Festy would be the better hunter.
    Festy is also an addict. She is addicted to Pounce, a cat treat. We’re trying to wean her, but the withdrawls are ugly.
    The Exploitation of Festivus
    As if it’s not enough that there are now two books about Festivus
(Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us,
Warner Books, 2005, Hachette Audio, 2006, expanded paperback edition, Grand Central Publishing, 2008; and
The Real Festivus,
Perigree, 2005), businessmen and others have schemed how to milk the holiday in myriad other ways. That this would infect it with the one element that most attracts many Festivus followers by its absence, commercialism, seems not to be a concern of those who would use Festivus for their own ends.

    In the flavor graveyard since 2002. Time for a revival?
    “We had a flash animation on our Web site where a gingerbread man came out and plugged in a Christmas tree and he got electrocuted and then the branches all fell out and it became a Festivus pole,” says Dave Stever, director of marketing for Ben & Jerry’s. The company produced a Fesstivus-flavor ice cream in 2000 and 2001. The flavor featured broken gingerbread men, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
    Charity
    WHAT : Festivus Maximus, concert to benefit Autism Society of Greater Cincinnati, held at Southgate House, Newport, Kentucky, December 18, 2004.
    BRAINCHILD OF : David Storm, musician and father of autistic son.
    PLEASE EXPLAIN : “We are trying to associate autism with something other than Dustin Hoffman and
Rain Man
.” RAISED : $2,000.
    WHAT