As not to embarrass yourself tonight at your Festivus family gathering, here are the four tenets of the holiday:
The Festivus Pole: During Festivus, an unadorned aluminum pole is displayed. The pole was chosen apparently in opposition to the commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees, because it is "very low-maintenance," and also because the holiday's patron, Frank Costanza, "find[s] tinsel distracting."
Festivus Dinner: The Festivus dinner menu is flexible, but it should consist of filling, non-holiday comfort food (no turkey, duck, goose, or ham). The televised dinner featured what may have been meatloaf or spaghetti in a red sauce. (Presumably, an entree in a red sauce is more festive.) Kruger took a flask out from his jacket and took a swig; so one might interpret that drinking is optional.
The Airing of Grievances: At the Festivus dinner, each participant tells friends and family of all the instances where they disappointed him or her that year.
The Feats of Strength: The head of the family tests his or her strength against one participant of the head's choosing. Festivus is not considered over until the head of the family has been pinned to the ground. A participant is allowed to decline to attempt to pin the head of the family only if they have something better to do instead.
December 23, 1942 -
The Noel Coward-David Lean War time drama, In Which We Serve, premiered in the US on this date.
After about three weeks of shooting, Noël Coward realized that (a) David Lean knew a lot more about filmmaking than he did, and (b) he didn't care much for the long hours. So Coward effectively handed the directorial reins over to his partner at that point.
December 23, 1954 -
Walt Disney's live-action film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, premiered on this date.
In 1969, Captain Nemo's pipe organ, which had been on display in Disneyland, was redressed and now resides in the ballroom of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. A duplicate was constructed for the ballroom of Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom Haunted Mansion, which opened in 1971, and over a decade later another duplicate was built for Tokyo Disneyland.
The climactic squid battle on the Nautilus was originally shot with a serene sunset and a calm sea. Director Richard Fleischer was troubled by the look of it because the cams and gears that operated the squid could easily be seen, making it look obviously fake. Walt Disney visited the set one day and Fleischer told him about the problem. Disney came up with the idea of having the squid battle take place during a fierce storm (another story is that it was actually screenwriter Earl Felton who came up with the idea). The scene was reshot that way and is considered by many to be the highlight of the film.
December 23, 1956 -
Alfred Hitchcock's classic quasi-docudrama, The Wrong Man, starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Quayle and Vera Miles, opened in Los Angeles, on this date.
This movie is one of Martin Scorsese's favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies, and was an influence on Scorese's Taxi Driver.
December 23, 1964 -
The Beach Boys made their first appearance on ABC-TV’s musical variety series Shindig!, on this date
The performance was tape on December 14th. Besides Little Saint Nick, the band went on to perform Dance, Dance, Dance, Monster Mash, Papa Oom Mow Mow, Johnny B. Goode,and We Three Kings of Orient Are. (Only hours before the show airs, Brian Wilson unfortunately suffered his first nervous breakdown on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston, in front of his horrified family.)
December 23, 1989 –
Phil Collins single Another Day In Paradise started a four week run at No. 1 on the US singles, on this date. Taken from his No. 1 album >…But Seriously, the song was written to bring attention to the problem of homelessness.
Collins told The New York Times how the song came together: “It was begun at the piano. I started playing and put it down on a tape so I wouldn’t forget it. Then I decided to see what would happen when I started singing. When I began, the words just came out, ‘She calls out to the man on the street.’ I didn’t set out to write a song about the homeless. Those were just the words I happened to sing. It was only then that I decided that was what the song would be about."
A surprize guest programmer - so scream really loud
Today in History:
December 23, 1690 -
Royal British astronomer John Flamsteed made the first sighting of Uranus by an astronomer on this date. Unfortunately, he didn't know what he was looking at, and classified it as a star: so yes, he didn't know Uranus from a star (I couldn't help myself.)
December 23, 1750 -
Benjamin Franklin was severely shocked while electrocuting a turkey on this date. Franklin believed electrocuting the turkey would make it more tender.
December 23, 1823 -
The famous poem A Visit From St. Nicholas was first published on this date. It begins, Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ....
Fourteen years after its first publication, an editor attributed the poem to a wealthy professor of classical literature named Clement Clarke Moore.
In the last few years, new evidence has come out that a Revolutionary War major named Henry Livingston Jr. may have been the actual author of The Night Before Christmas.
His family has letters describing his recitation of the poem before it was originally published, and literary scholars have found many similarities between his work and The Night Before Christmas. He was also three quarters Dutch, and many of the details in the poem, including names of the reindeer, have Dutch origins.
December 23, 1888 -
After an argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh took a razor and removes a portion of his left ear. Their quarrel regarded the prostitutes in Arles who seemed to prefer Gauguin over Van Gogh; the painter delivered his ear a startled prostitute. She fainted.
Some women get very emotional when they receive that special gift.
December 23, 1938 -
The Coelacanth is one of the oldest living fish, and was thought to have gone extinct some 60 million years before Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovered the fish among the catch of a local angler, Captain Hendrick Goosen who caught one off the coast of South Africa on this date.
Since that time, more than 200 Coelacanths have been caught. It is one of the textbook examples of a "living fossil."
December 23, 1947 -
The transistor was successfully demonstrated on at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, on this date.
Bell Labs is the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The three individuals credited with the invention of the transistor were William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain.
December 23, 1948 -
Japanese Premier Tojo and six others were hanged by the War Crimes Commission at Sugamo Prison, Tokyo, for the crime of starting an aggressive war on this date.
Now, that's not a necktie you want for Christmas.
December 23, 1954 -
The first successful kidney transplant between living patients were undertaken was performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston on this date.
Murray and his assistants removed one of Robert Herrick's kidneys and grafted it into his twin brother, Richard, who was dying of kidney failure. Richard Herrick made a successful recovery and lived another eight years.
December 23, 1968 -
On the first day of the first flight ever by astronauts to orbit the Moon, Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman suffers from the first documented case of motion sickness. Previous astronauts had reported nothing -- partly because their ships were too small for them to move around a lot and get queasy, partly because they kept their mouths shut for fear they'd never fly again.
Oh, wait a minute, yes there is - barfing into someone else's spacesuit.
December 23, 1972 –
Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers grabbed a deflected pass from quarterback Terry Bradshaw to score a touchdown, winning the game for the Steelers 13-7 over the Oakland Raiders, on this date.
The NFL’s Immaculate Reception, as it has become to be known, is one of the most famous plays in the history of American football.
December 23, 1986 -
Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck Yeager), the Rutan Voyager became the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, landing at California's Edwards Air Force Base after a nine-day trip on this date.
They covered 24,986 miles, more than doubling the old distance record set by a Boeing B-52 bomber in 1962 — a world record that remains unchallenged today.
December 23, 1985 -
In a Lutheran school playground, James Vance and Raymond Belknap acted upon a drunken suicide pact forged while listening to Stained Class by Judas Priest. Belknap shot a 12 gauge shotgun under his chin, dying instantly, and Vance followed, but survived with a severely disfigured face. He later dies from painkillers on Thanksgiving three years later. Both kids' parents file suit against the band, but a judge ultimately rejects their subliminal message theory.
I believe anyone would kill themselves being forced to listen to Judas Priest, but that's just me.
December 23, 2009 -
The man who triggered a major alert by falsely claiming that his son was adrift in a helium balloon has been sentenced to ninety days in jail, and his wife to twenty, on this date. Richard Heene, and his wife Mayumi, said in October that their son had been carried off by the balloon.
The boy was eventually found hiding at home. Heene apologised to rescue workers and the community in the Colorado courtroom. The judge ordered four years of supervised probation for the couple and banned them from receiving any form of financial benefit from the case.
And so it goes
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