Festivus: The ‘Seinfeld’ holiday for voicing grievances is for everyone this year

Festivus harks back to sitcoms from the past. The farcical holiday was born on the TV show ‘Seinfeld’ on December 18, 1997, when George Costanza, played by Jason Alexander, revealed that his father (played by the late Jerry Stiller) had created the day to explore the religious and commercial aspects of the traditional December holidays. Jerry Seinfeld, the lead actor on his eponymous show – which ran on NBC from July 5, 1989 to May 14, 1998, with nine seasons and 180 episodes – is interested in the holiday and its idiosyncratic rituals.

“Festivus to the rest of us!” is the slogan that caught like wildfire after the episode.

The holiday comes complete with an array of traditions to match this year of a pandemic and otherwise lockdowns and gloom, including a dull pole instead of a brightly lit tree. Perhaps most poignantly, the Festivus tradition also calls for a special ceremony known as ‘expressing grievances’ where you can tell the people in your life how they disappointed you. I’m sure if “Seinfeld” were still producing new episodes, they would expand the Festivus parameters so you can complain about the pandemic and everything else that is upside down in your life.

I, for instance, will happily gather around a scruffy salvaged pole and get my head off. I will tell you all about all the missed family parties, the missed dates with friends, the missed play dates for my child. I will even complain about the missed moments when I could have met a stranger, made a new friend, a neighbor, a new chance, a new breath of life. I already feel better when I think about all that complaining about releasing verbal run-ons in 2020 in one fell swoop, all in the name of Festivus!

And then I hope I feel better and am thankful that my family is doing well and that my toddler will have more fun tearing wrapping paper and playing with the box of the toys that took forever to arrive.

I know expressing my complaints can be cathartic, but complaining too much, like too much of anything, may not be good for me.

“The trick to doing this in an emotionally healthy way is to differentiate between two types of grievances: those we can’t help but actually want to resolve,” he said.

If your grievances are about things that you can’t control, like not being able to see loved ones or the last movie or dinner, “at least get around that pole and vent,” Winch said.

But if you have some control over the complaint, yelling at a ragged pole while others listen may not be the answer. Instead, choose to address the complaint directly with them, or ‘scream into an abyss, but don’t create tension and fights that could ruin what would otherwise be a lovely (ironic) celebration of pettiness, misery, nagging and victimization are, ‘said Lier.

Complaining alone isn’t a useful strategy, according to Tina Gilbertson, a Denver psychotherapist and author of “Constructive Wallowing: How to Beat Bad Feelings by Letting Yourself Have Them.”

“Speaking your grievances is only half the battle when it comes to feeling better,” she said. “Have someone validate the emotions behind each complaint, or do this for yourself. For example, if you say, ‘I hate being stuck at home,’ give it a response like, ‘Yeah! locked up. “Every complaint needs a compassionate testimony to heal.”

For those who really want to get into the letter of the Festivus Law, the pole and grievances are followed by an attempt to literally pin everyone around you. Obviously, this isn’t wise if they’re not already in your Covid virus bubble, or if you expect them to cook for your dinner later, but it can be cathartic to wrestle your roommates and release some of that extra tension, one gets hit injured.

And yet there is reason to pause before going full out.

“I think the ‘voicing grievances’ depicted in ‘Seinfeld’ is probably the last thing we need this year,” said David Susman, a licensed psychologist based in Lexington, Kentucky, via email.

“With the compounded stress of COVID-19, political strife and racial unrest starting in 2020, we now need to focus on positivity, healing and collaboration,” added Susman, who is also an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.

What a party shit.

This year is Festivus, a holiday born of American television, which we will continue to lean on at home this year, not for the The rest of us as much as it is most of us. So go ahead, put your pole on and off your grievances. Maybe leave a little room for positivity if you can, because even George Costanza’s dad smiled occasionally.