Frank Costanza and Religion

"A Festivus for the rest of us!" this is probably one of Frank Costanza’s most famous quotes from Seinfeld. Throughout the show, Frank seems to be the most liberal about religion. In his early days, he was salesman selling Christian artifacts in Korea. Then he marries Estelle, whom, according to both Larry David and Jason Alexander was supposed to be Jewish. After this, he invents the holiday of Festivus, which was designed to get rid of the commercial and religious aspects of Christmas. It seems that throughout Frank’s life, he steers farther and farther away from religion.

Although we do not know that much about Frank’s Childhood, we do know that he was born in Italy. Also, as it has been mentioned that George is Half Jewish, we do know that he most likely had a somewhat traditional Christian upbringing. This is probably what led to his business venture in selling Christian religious articles in Korea. Although we don’t know if he was a salesman or a cook in the army first, it would make sense that there was some sort of experience, such as going to war, that gave him such a drastic change in belief.  

As mentioned above, Estelle Costanza, although never explicitly mentioned, is supposed to be Jewish. Frank’s decision to marry her shows that he may have lost a deep connection with Christianity either after the war, during some unmentioned event, or just over time.

From this time, until “many Christmases ago”, Frank’s loss of connection with religion burgeoned into an utter hatred for it. When he went to go and buy a doll for George, him and another man got in a fight over the last one. Frank saw how the commercialization of Christmas made everyone crazy, and he decided to do something about it. He created Festivus.

Festivus, a very Frank-esque holiday, in which everything has a meaning, begins with the “Airing of Grievances”, in which each person says how each person at the table has disappointed them in the past year. This fits Frank as he is always talking about how George has let him down regardless of whether it is Festivus or not. Then, the “Feats of Strength” are performed in which the head of the household must be pinned before proceeding. This shows Frank’s confidence in himself, and the fact that he wants to build character in George. To top it all off, there is the Festivus Pole. The pole represents Frank Costanza well in the sense that he is a no-nonsense kind of guy, however it lacks his outrageous personality.

In “The Conversion”, we see Frank’s anti-religious personality come out again. When he finds out that George is converting, he is against it, and proposes calling a lawyer to get out of it. He then forbids George to “perform any rituals” in his house.

Throughout Frank’s life, we see him go from Christian artifact salesman to inter-marrying to creating his own holiday to being very against his son’s conversion. The one part of the Seinfeld series that does not follow this understanding of Frank’s relationship with religion is the fact that he is a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-Catholic fraternal organization. This was probably just an error on the writers’ part, as we have seen before in the series.