Sorting through our shared memories, my brother and I have one holiday flashback that always generates a good chortle.
The two of us are standing hand-in-hand in a long mall line-up, and at the end of the line is a towering man dressed in red and white, inviting the children in front of us to take a seat on his lap and tell him what toys they would like this holiday season.
Together, we are bawling our eyes out and screaming at the top of our lungs with a dramatic flair far beyond anything we can now accomplish as adults.
My maternal grandparents, who took us to the mall for the innocent purpose of meeting Santa Claus, were probably embarrassed. Looking back on the memory now, I can imagine why it was important for their only grandchildren at the time to saddle up next to Santa and say, "cheese." There was only one problem for my Christian grandparents in this scenario, namely, their grandchildren were raised Jewish.
My mom converted to Judaism before she and my dad married, but if my grandparents were disappointed about this course of events, I never felt it; both of them heaped love onto my brother and me during the holiday season, showering us with presents and joining us while we spun the dreidel, even crying out, “gelt, gelt!” when their spin landed them some chocolate coins.
On the first night of Hanukkah, they would gather around the Menorah with us, bowing their head as my mother and I recited the blessing on the candles.
Hanukkah celebrates the victory of the Jewish Maccabees, who defended their religious beliefs in a three-year battle against the forces of King Antiochus two millennia ago. The holiday also commemorates the cleansing and restoration of an important temple Antiochus desecrated.
The story goes that once Judas Maccabeus (the Maccabees’ namesake) entered the Temple to reclaim it, he found Antiochus had destroyed all the Temple’s sacred oil, except for a small jar.
The jar contained enough oil to burn for just one day, but instead, miraculously burned for eight. This is the reason there are eight days of Hanukkah.
The menorah, a candelabra with eight branches and one “helper candle” used to light the other candles, recreates this blessing. Hanukkah food also commemorates the miraculous oil: latkes and sufganiyot (jelly donuts) are popular holiday treats.
Hanukkah has the appearance of shifting around over the years for those of us following the Gregorian calendar, falling on the 25th day of the Jewish lunar month of Kislev. This past year, Hanukkah arrived earlier, on Nov. 28.
Traditionally, gifts aren’t exchanged during Hanukkah; this was added on in recent years, as the holiday often falls around Christmas.
Growing up, my Christian friends would often ask me if I received a new gift every night of the holiday. For my family at least, this wasn’t true, but that didn’t mean I refrained from telling them otherwise. The holiday sounded a tad more eventful that way — a departure from the more common, unintentional tradition of forgetting to light the Menorah on more than one of the eight days.
Unlike the relatively new practice of gift-giving, lighting the Menorah (also referred to as a Chanukiah) is a ritual with specific instructions to follow: on the first night of Hanukkah, you light the helper candle, and then add a single candle on the right of the menorah. As the days go on, you continue to add candles from the right, but light the candles beginning on the left.
The complexities of this ritual were apparently debated by first-century scholars, one of whom argued the first night should begin with the Menorah fully lit with all eight candles. Having the light diminish would symbolize the effort required to fend off the darkness at the beginning of the holiday, which declines as the ritual unfolds.
This method didn’t catch on. Instead, each night the light builds — a reminder of the way small changes can slowly turn into a blanket of brilliance. In the wintertime, this reminder feels more essential than ever, as the light of the day becomes more scarce.
For me, lighting the candles each Hanukkah makes me feel more connected to my Jewish heritage, and is also a reminder of my maternal grandparents who often joined us on those days, bringing their joy, light, and love to the Hanukkah season.
