Happy Chanuka!

So, as I was saying over at Flamingo Fotos, Chanukah is an eight-day Jewish holiday that begins this evening at sundown. It commemorates the story of the Maccabbees, a small band of Jewish soldiers who beat the crap out of one of our myriad enemies that I can’t remember off the top of my head just at the moment…Persians, Syrians, Romans, Philistines… pick one.

Anyway, so after the invaders split, the Maccabbees cleaned up the Great Temple and purified it. They went to relight the altar lamp (symbolizing God’s presence), but there was only enough oil to last one day. They lit it anyway and sent somebody to go find some more. It took the guy eight whole days to find some more oil, but in a great miracle, the lamp stayed lit until he got there!

Being somewhat cynical, I have a couple of problems with this: One – Men are cleaning and purifying? Really? and Two – So, we’re not celebrating that this ragtag bunch of guys with limited resources pounded the crap out of a force many times larger and better equipped and we got our temple back. What we’re really celebrating is that a pot of oil lasted eight days instead of one. Go figure.

There are several holiday traditions that emerged from this story: First, of course, would be the lighting of candles every night at sunset (one the first night, two the second, etc. – see Flamingo Fotos for more on this.

The second would be the “dreidel game”. Dreidels as I started to explain over at the other site, are four-sided tops. Each side is marked with the first initial of the phrase “a Great Miracle Happened There”. In Hebrew of course. So, you spin the dreidel, and if it lands on the initial for Miracle (I think), you win! What do you win? Money! It’s a betting game! Come on, how cool is that? A religious holiday celebrated by gambling!

The third holiday tradition is – and what Jewish holiday would be complete without – food. And not just any food – fried food! Especially doughnuts and potato pancakes (called latkes). The more oil, the better (symbolizing the oil that lasted eight days, naturally). Mmmm!

MJ is half Jewish (his mother, who liked Christmas more than Chanukah, and really doesn’t give a crap about any holiday; and his father is lapsed Irish Catholic, now more agnostic or atheist or pretty much not much of anything, and really doesn’t give a crap about any holiday). When we got married, we made a deal: I get all the Jewish holidays, and all he wants in return is Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day. As my friend, Miz Shoes, observed – all he wants are the holidays where you give presents and get to drink unabashedly – such a deal!

Some folks have asked me how I handle the Chanukah/Christmas juxtaposition. This is how:

So, Happy Chanukah to all of you to whom it applies!