“In the ancient days when gods played their own games, and had their own celebrations, tossing lightning bolts between mountaintops, hurling great boulders — Festivus came out of that.”
Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (2005)
Context: In the ancient days when gods played their own games, and had their own celebrations, tossing lightning bolts between mountaintops, hurling great boulders — Festivus came out of that. It's a holiday that celebrates being alive at a time when it was hard to be alive.
There was no Christ yet, no Yahweh, no Buddha. There were great ruins and raw nature. But there was a kindling spark of hope among men. They celebrated that great thunderous storms hadn't enveloped them in the past year, that landslides hadn't destroyed them. They made wishes that their crops would grow in the fields, that they'd have food the next year and the wild animals wouldn't attack and eat them.
There's something pure about Festivus, something primal, raw in the hearts of humans.
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Jerry Stiller 4
American comedian 1927Related quotes
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“All I'm saying is, if you celebrate Festivus, you may live a little longer.”
Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (2005)
Context: All I'm saying is, if you celebrate Festivus, you may live a little longer.
You are getting back to the essentials, to the days of gods on mountaintops and howling wolves. Because you are saying the holidays are in the heart, a celebration of being alive with our fellow humans. For that purpose, an aluminum pole will do just as well as anything else — as long as it's not stuck in the wrong place.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter V · Forces
“Oh but if Zeus's lightning blinded us those days,
it's Zeus who drives us, hurls us on today!”
XV. 724–725 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
“He has the attention span of a bolt of lightning.”
Robert Redford, quoted in Maureen Dowd, "Testing Himself," The New York Times (1986-09-28), section 6, page 16, column 1
