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Arts & Entertainment

A Georgetown Festivus

Old Glory celebrates the famed Seinfeld holiday

DC Voting Rights, being overeducated and underemployed, canceled TV shows, the Redskins and exploding ketchups are just a few of the several grievances shared at celebration Wednesday evening.

"We're a fun, casual restaurant. It seems like something fun, different and silly to do," said general manager Casey King in an earlier interview.

Festivus is the secular holiday introduced to the "rest of us" by Frank Castanza in a 1997 Seinfeld episode. It is observed on December 23 with an aluminum pole (instead of a Christmas tree), the airing of grievances (instead of the counting of blessings), the Festivus dinner and the feats of strength. The holiday may appear to be fictional, but it was real. According to The New York Times, the father of a Seinfeld writer invented the celebration in1966. Daniel O'Keefe, the writer, then incorporated his family tradition on the show. Since that episode, the holiday has sparked a pop culture phenomenon.

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In Washington, D.C., the Adams Morgan neighborhood has been participating in the airing of grievances for two years. The bulletin board on the intersection of Adams Mill and Columbia roads turns into an open forum filled with rants every December.

Georgetown got a dose of Festivus this year when , 3139 M St., decided to partake in the merriment. December's menu included drink and food specials related to this Seinfeld holiday. The prix-fixe menu (although not available on our table last night) with the salad, meatloaf and chocolate cake with M&Ms was served. The Festivus punch with Captain Morgan rum served on a mason jar and the Kramer, a classic Manhattan, also made appearances that evening.

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Everyone was welcome to write down their objections and complaints throughout December on a large flip chart pad by the aluminum pole on the main floor. "Most of them are funny. Some of them at night are a little risqué," said King.

King also planned to repost sheets from past weeks' grievances on the day of Festivus, but only one sheet with perhaps Wednesday's list of rants was visible. The open-mic session, in which guests could voice their complaints to the Old Glory public, commenced at 8 p.m. when a staff member read a few of the written items from the pad.

But it was a slow and silent night on M St. compared to other weeknights. Several diners did trickle into the bar before midnight, but not many participated in the open-mic. One young man read a slew of grievances from his phone, such as playing video games instead of eating breakfast. Before he left the restaurant, another person from a group of four twenty-somethings actually posted a typed list of his grievances on top of the pad, which were a rejected musical adaptation and eggplant.

As expected, there wasn't a wrestling match associated the feats of strengths that evening. The Festivus sites, however, do offer non-violent suggestions, such as arm or thumb wrestling, for the competition. But perhaps the friendly card game between the bartenders and a couple of customers were in lieu of that tradition. 

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