Festival of Lights

misc

To quote one Adam Sandler:

Put on your yarmulke
It’s time for Chanukkah

It’s become somewhat fashionable among the socially-conscious, forward-thinking leftist Jews of our generation to bemoan the heavily commercialized Christmas clone that the Festival of Lights has become. But it’s not all bad. Here, to assuage your guilty Jewish conscience, is a list of reasons why the American Chanukkah, for all its flaws, is actually a good thing:

6. Presents

Yes, presents. After all, it’s not as though Judaism is not without its gift-giving; this just traditionally falls on Purim, Chanukkah being reserved for that other Jewish pleasure, cash money. But let’s be realistic – it’s too much to try to do the Booze Holiday, the Costume Holiday and the Present Holiday in a single evening. Doing the gifts now gives us more time to focus on drowning out the image of Rabbi Chester in drag when Purim rolls around.

5. Visibility

Chanukkah, especially the great big well-light 12-foot menorah kind of Chanukkah we like to do in this country, serves as an opportunity to remind everybody else that the Jews are still 1n ur b4se 0wning ur m3dia, we still believe in God, and no, we don’t have horns.

4. Accessibility

I counted at least two stories in the Chronicle today about people who were able to reconnect with their Jewish heritage through Chanukkah (and nary a mention of Christmas. See what I said about the media?). And while it’s perhaps a little unfortunate that this is many people’s only connection to the tribe, the fact is that with the American Jewish community shrinking as it is, a Chanukkah Jew is better than no Jew at all.

3. History

They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat. OK, so it’s the same story as every other holiday. But this one is (relatively) contemporary, taking place only a few thousand years ago, and has given us also the great Jewish inventions of the Dreidel and Guilt.

2. Food

Oil, oil and more oil! But the opening up and publicization of this holiday means that everybody now has their special latke recipe. And when everybody wants to try the recipe that they clipped out of their local paper, everybody has to bring latkes to dinner – MORE FOOD! My father (who is, like O.J. Simpson, still not a Jew) is famous among our friends for his zucchini, carrot and jalapeño latkes. And this is all to say nothing of jelly doughnuts and the innumerable kugels that seem to get turned out during this season.

1. Solidarity

There is nothing like the Christmas season to remind one that ours is still very much a Christian country. So it’s incredibly reassuring to be reminded by the low-level hum of Chanukkah advertising that we are not the only family not going tree shopping or leaving out cookies for Santa, and that tens of thousands of families throughout this country will also be lighting their menorahs for the next eight days. We are not alone.

 If you can think of any more reasons to round this out to a nice eight or nine it would be greatly appreciated.

Chag sameach to all.