It’s the first true Festivus miracle.
Thanks to the faux holiday popularized by Jerry Seinfeld, a drug felon in California got to eat kosher TV dinners instead of the usual prison slop.
Before he was incarcerated in April, Malcolm Alarmo King, 38, convinced a judge he needed to be served the pre-packaged kosher meals due to his strict observance of “Festivus.”
“Court orders that the defendant is to receive a high protein no salami diet three times per day for ‘Festivism,’ ” Judge Derek Johnson ruled in May, when King was incarcerated in an Orange County jail.
“Festivus for the rest of us,” as the made-up holiday is described on the show by Frank Costanza, provides an alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah marked by an airing of grievances, feats of strength, miracles that aren’t miracles, and the Festivus pole.
The Orange County sheriff’s office didn’t realize the inmate had Jerry-rigged the system until they looked up Festivus on Wikipedia, Commander Dave Wilson said.
It took the county’s lawyers several months to get the order overturned while King enjoyed kosher TV-dinner-style meals that cost more than twice as much as the usual fare.
“This guy doesn’t need a kosher diet for Festivus,” Wilson said. “But any inmate is free to observe the holiday. We don’t have Festivus poles, but plenty of our housing locations have bars in them.”
King wanted the kosher meals because he thought they’d be healthier and enable him to maintain his physique, lawyer Fred Thiagarajah said.
“I don’t think he had ever seen ‘Seinfeld,’ but the judge told me he needed a religion to put down on the order,” Thiagarajah said.
“I’m not sure why it popped into my head, but in truth I think Festivus does constitute a legitimate religion. More people subscribe to Festivus than to so-called legitimate religions like Zoroastrianism.”
King was released in October, but is currently in custody once more pending a deportation hearing, officials said.
Festivus was invented by Dan O’Keefe, 82, of Westchester, whose son Daniel was a writer on “Seinfeld” — originally to celebrate the anniversary of his first date with his wife.
As for King’s adherence to the made-up holiday, O’Keefe said, “It’s very interesting.”
“We certainly have some strange lawyers out there,” he said.
Jerry Seinfeld said he was amused by King’s creative defense, but would only say, through his publicist, that “the story speaks for itself.”