Jordan Press

OTD 28 years ago "The Strike" aired, and the world learned about "Festivus." We spoke with Dan O'Keefe whose father created Festivus. Dan was Not a fan of the episode, did Not want the episode to air, and to him, Festivus brings back deep rooted trauma. Dan explains: The way people adopted it, I didn’t see that coming. You gotta understand, I’ve been saying this for a while, yeah, that was my father, he was mentally ill and a drunk, but extremely brilliant. For whatever reason he invented this weird fucking extra holiday that was celebrated at random times. It did not have a set date. It was extremely upsetting. It was like borderline child endangerment, and it was not fun. So my brothers and I had this deal: you do not talk about it outside of the house, and we just try to pretend it’s not happening. But I didn’t pitch it, I didn’t want it to go in. I hoped it would fail and be edited out, and nevertheless, the damn thing survived. The reality is far weirder. I have the CDs that were remastered from the cassette tapes my dad used to make during the annual recording of this insanity, which is mostly him screaming about internal Reader’s Digest politics in a deep slur while my brothers are crying and my mom is telling him to simmer down. That was not something I agitated for, quite the reverse. So how do I feel about it taking off? I try to block it out. This holiday was basically an encapsulation of alcoholism and mental illness into one neat little wrapper. I was as surprised as anyone. I was not a booster of this. I was surprised it got on the air. I am beyond surprised that it seems to be something that has, to some extent, legs. There are still a few people who celebrate it. Good for them. I do not personally. I did my time on that in the ’70s and ’80s. Jerry Stiller made it fun. The real thing was terrifying, obviously, and you understood why George was not in favor of it. But he made it fun, and it was Jeff Schaffer’s joke—the idea to give it a pole. That was not the case. The real symbology of it was more peculiar and not as wholesome as an aluminum pole with a good strength-to-weight ratio.