There are three major holidays that everyone should celebrate towards the end of each year: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Festivus.
You’re probably familiar with the traditional holidays that I mentioned, but there’s a chance you aren’t aware of the tradition known as Festivus. If you do find yourself in that boat, you’ve got something in common with Amazon’s Thursday Night Football panel.
The fact that many people have apparently never heard of Festivus means that a lot of people have never watched the classic 90’s sitcom Seinfeld, and that my friends is a problem.
In fact, in a weird full circle kind of thing, one of the main focuses of the made-up holiday is to call out other people for not knowing things in an “airing of grievances,” and that’s what people are doing after none of the panel on TNF knew what Festivus was.
When the football analysts (and football liar Charissa Thompson) were recapping the Baltimore Ravens victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, the topic of Festivus came up when speaking about the Jets.
The crew was looking forward to next week’s Black Friday Game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets (featuring Garth Brooks), and former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick pointed out that the Jets’ players only meeting was probably a lot like Festivus.
Fitzpatrick stated:
“It turns into Festivus, the airing of grievances, where you’re just there, you don’t like people, why don’t you… Festivus? No it’s Seinfeld. You don’t know Festivus?”
Fitzpatrick couldn’t even finish his explanation before the chorus of “what’s Festivus?” started amongst his panelist peers. Much like how Ryan felt, the world could not believe that 4 of the 5 people on the panel had never heard of Festivus.
Charissa Thompson even chalks it up to some kind of Harvard lingo when the man is literally referencing one of the most popular TV shows of all time…
Take a look:
How tragic is that?
Even if you’ve never binged Seinfeld, you would at least hope that everyone has seen, or is at least aware of, the Festivus episode. George Costanza’s father Frank (played by the incomparable Jerry Stiller) created the holiday, a “Festivus for the rest of us” to be exact.
It’s a lot like Christmas, except with Festivus, you gather your family around and tell them how much they’ve disappointed you in the past year.
There’s also a “feats of strength” portion of the holiday, and I know all of this is confusing, so the best way to properly understand Festivus would be to watch this video below:
