The Festivus Meditations

2017--2025

By Lucius Hyde-White and Swami Scabbers

Each year since 2017, Lucius Hyde-White and Swami Scabbers have recorded an address for Festivus. Lucius, the master of ceremonies, introduces the Swami at length, with feeling, and at the Swami’s expense. The Swami, too high-minded for preparation, relies on the wings of inspiration to deliver his spiritual message.

What follows, over nine years: instruction in a meditation technique that is not crocheting; a ghost story in which every visiting spirit sells vacuum cleaners; a sea ballad interrupted by sponsors; a Prince of Flushing urged by his father’s ghost toward something beginning with “R” (seven letters); two companions waiting on a potato that will not be done; a detective on the trail of whoever is smashing the city’s Napoleon pastries; a vampire negotiating for a split-level with a crypt; a djinn itemizing which parts of his captives he means to remove; and a hard-boiled private eye hired to recover a plain black eggcup from Fabergé’s “form follows function” period.

These short radio plays are a furry tribute to festive fellowship—literature for the rest of us.