Festivus pole to honor state’s dead

Chaz Stevens, a self-described atheist from Boca Raton, made national news for putting up a Festivus pole made of beer cans at the state Capitol seven years ago

Now he wants to place a more somber display in the Capitol Rotunda to honor those who lost their lives to COVID-19.

“Just thinking about those we lost, are losing and the worst to come,” he said.

Instead of being decorated with beer cans, this year’s Festivus pole would be spray-painted black and topped with a surgical mask, Stevens says.

The mask will sport one word: Vote.

Stevens hopes to set up the display Dec. 23, then take it down the same day. But first he needs the OK from the state.

Stevens put in a formal request Dec. 4 and was still waiting on an answer as of Wednesday.

The pole, a running joke on the 1990s sitcom Seinfeld, celebrates the satirical holiday Festivus, “a festival for the rest of us.”

Stevens won permission to display a Festivus pole at the Florida Capitol three years in a row starting in 2013.

In 2015, Stevens got another 15 minutes of fame putting up Festivus poles around the country.

That year, he went with a Gay Pride theme, setting up rainbow-colored poles topped with disco balls from Florida to Illinois, Oklahoma, Washington, Georgia and Missouri.

This year, with coronavirus cases surging, Stevens says he wanted to do something to honor the people taken by the virus.

On his application to the state, he gives this reason for the display: “Remembrance of those we lost.”

MARKWALLHEISER/GETTYIMAGES 2013 Atheist activist Chaz Stevens talks to the media next to his Festivus pole in the Rotunda of the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee. This year, Stevens wants to put up a more somber pole honoring those lost to COVID-19.