O Festivus pole, thy aluminum is so shiny!
By Dinesh Ramde
Associated Press
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MILWAUKEE — Kevin Campanella hates buying and receiving Christmas presents that he says inevitably disappoint. This year, no such worries.
Campanella plans to seek "serenity now" by celebrating Festivus, a wacky holiday popularized in a 1997 "Seinfeld" episode. Billed as "Festivus for the rest of us," the holiday celebrated by the Costanza clan on Dec. 23 features an airing of grievances and feats of strength in which a guest must pin the host before the party ends.
In protest of Christmas' commercialism, character Frank Costanza puts up an unadorned aluminum pole instead of a tree. The metal, he says, has a "very high strength-to-weight ratio."
"I just always loved that episode," said Campanella, 28, a landscaper from Warwick, R.I. "But it's not so much about the show — I think the idea of Festivus is a good idea."
So does The Wagner Cos. The Milwaukee-based maker of hand-railing components brought back its line of Festivus poles for the holidays. The company had plenty of rails on hand and launched the product last year on a whim.
"We did it mainly as a lark. We never looked at it as a tremendous moneymaking scheme," said Tony Leto, the company's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "But in many ways, Festivus is taking on a life of its own."
Wagner, which made $15 million last year from products such as pipe elbows, earned only a few thousand dollars from Festivus pole sales. Leto credits bloggers with strong "Seinfeld" loyalties for spreading the news.
This season, Wagner sold about 300 poles by mid-December, said Leto.
Wagner offers a 6-foot Festivus pole for $38 and a 2-foot-8-inch tabletop model for $30. The setup is simple: a hollow pipe, 1.9 inches in diameter, inserted into a collapsible aluminum base.
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, a "Seinfeld" fanatic who claims to have seen every episode eight times, displayed one of the company's poles last year at the governor's mansion in Madison.
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