A Holiday for the Rest of Us: No Grievances to Air Here

By Mike Dunne
The Sacramento Bee

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- If there's a year-end salutation that doesn't seem to be riling anyone, it's "Happy Festivus!"

Its obscurity may have something to do with that. Not everyone is into rituals dating from ancient Rome, or even reruns of "Seinfeld."

But Festivus has several appealing attributes going for it. It's a celebration free of dogma and obligation. It's more spontaneous than organized, more casual than formal. It not only has a sense of humor, it can be downright silly -- a simple aluminum pole is the centerpiece, wrestling is a highlight, grievances are aired. Who can't have comfortable fun with that?

Even though "Happy Festivus!" isn't a year-end greeting as familiar as ... well, you know ... there are signs that the celebration is developing a following.

My favorite evidence is Festivus wine, the second vintage of which just has been released. It's the lean, firm and subtly complex Festivus 2003 Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon ($16). Its pleasant flavor, an accessible mix of cherries, spice and mint, makes it more suitable as an aperitif than as a companion for ham glazed with Snapple and Junior Mints, a staple of Festivus parties, so I hear.

The label is a bleached longhorn skull atop an aluminum pole, decorated with strands of green lights, a bunch of purple wine grapes and a glowing nose, all of which come dangerously close to giving the logo the look of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Festivus the wine is a brand of Grape Ranch, a 700-acre spread just outside Okemah, along Interstate 40 in east-central Oklahoma. Brothers Dan and Jack Whiteman grow pecans and hay there, but three years ago they also planted 15 acres to wine-grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc and zinfandel.

They've been marketing wine only as long, teaming up with California wineries to produce a portfolio of commemorative bottlings recognizing such Oklahoman institutions as the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival (Guthrie was a native of Okemah) and the University of Oklahoma vs. University of Texas football rivalry.

"We're not taking ourselves too seriously," says Jack Whiteman. "We're the largest winery in the state, but we like to have fun." The largest winery in Oklahoma markets about 4,500 cases a year, of which 500 are the Festivus.

The 2003 Festivus was made by J. Pedroncelli Winery of Geyserville in northern Sonoma County. The wine can be ordered only through www.festivuswine.com, one of the Grape Ranch's Web sites.

The release of the wine coincides with the publication of the book "Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us" by Allen Salkin (Warner Books, $14.95, 132 pages).

In the book, Salkin draws from the research of Brian A. Krostenko, a professor of classics at the University of Notre Dame, to show that Festivus has been celebrated for 22 centuries, starting in ancient Rome as a religious ceremony.

"As Christianity pervaded the empire, festivus referred not only to dinner parties and rituals in churches but also to merriments associated with pagan feast days," Krostenko says in "Festivus." (In a phone interview, Krostenko also noted that the original pronunciation of "festivus" is "fest-e-vus," though now it's generally pronounced "fest-a-vus," perhaps to rhyme with the frequently accompanying phrase "a holiday for the rest of us.")

Salkin traces the modern revival of Festivus to Dec. 18, 1997, when an episode of the sitcom "Seinfeld" featured a subplot centered on the celebration.

Jerry Stiller, who portrayed the character Frank Costanza on "Seinfeld," where he claimed to have invented Festivus after finding himself in a department-store tug-of-war with another shopper over a Christmas doll, wrote the foreword to Salkin's book.

"I realized there had to be a better way," said Frank Costanza.

In the foreword, he clears up the significance of the aluminum pole: "There's nothing to an aluminum pole. It has no feeling. It says, 'I am what I am.' You endow the aluminum pole with whatever you want to. It leaves you open to explore your own meaning. It is lightweight stuff, but in the form of an airplane it gets you from one part of the world to the next. Remember that."

A KINKADE CRUSH

One of Thomas Kinkade's luminous paintings is "Abundant Harvest" -- a few rows of old vines in the foreground, hot-air balloons over rolling vineyards in the background, his telltale sunshine lighting up water tower, windmill and farmhouse in the middle.

Man, wouldn't a vintner love to use that or some other Kinkade painting on a wine label.

For Mitchell Shultz, owner of Stonehouse Vineyards & Winery in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, such a dream could become reality.

"At some point we hope to have that happen," says Shultz, though the painting won't necessarily be "Abundant Harvest." "He says he's going to do it, but he's such a busy guy."

Kinkade, says Shultz, is a close friend. Shultz's tasting room doubles as a Kinkade gallery, and though the winery has been open only a year, Shultz already is working on an even larger tasting room so he can expand exhibit space.

This summer, Shultz also plans to build a "Kinkade-style wedding chapel" at his vineyard, which the artist subsequently is to paint and publish. Whether it ends up on a label of Stonehouse wine remains to be seen.

The site already has a cottage similar to the cozy bungalows that often are subjects of Kinkade paintings. Members of the winery's wine club can rent it as a weekend retreat.

The Kinkade connection isn't the only element to distinguish Stonehouse. Though the winery is in the middle of zinfandel country, Shultz is especially keen on cabernet sauvignon, confident it ultimately will be the varietal for which Stonehouse is recognized. But he's also making zinfandel, chardonnay and port, and will add syrah next year.

(c) 2005 The Sacramento Bee