Inmate Uses 'Festivus' to Score Better Meals

Here’s a Festivus miracle for you: An inmate in an Orange County Jail managed to get better food for months by saying he needed it to adhere to the “religion” of Festivus. Malcolm Alarmo King is a health nut, the Orange County Register explains, who didn’t want to eat the jail’s all-salami menu, so he asked for kosher, high-protein meals. The sheriff’s department complained that such pricier fare was reserved for those with religious restrictions. So King’s lawyer listed his religion as “Festivus.”

No, you didn’t miss anything in that Seinfeld episode; keeping kosher is not one of the precepts of Festivus, a goofy made-up holiday that involves wrestling, an aluminum pole, and telling people how much they’ve disappointed you. But a judge bought it. King got his special diet for two months before the county got the court order thrown out, a sheriff’s spokesman tells the AP. (More Festivus stories.)