By the time you read this, Hanukkah will be over. I think.
But I hope you’ll keep that just between us, because I don’t plan to have it arrive at my house until my kids are all home from college. I’m calling it “Hanukkah Observed.”
1. It’s not as if anyone really knows when Hanukkah is, anyway — except for rabbis and maybe some kosher butchers. (Give me a break — nobody even knows how to spell Hanukkah/Chanuka/Channukah, including me.) It’s not like it’s July 4th, with a clue right in the name.
Some years, Hanukkah has actually come before Thanksgiving; some years it didn’t arrive until after New Year’s. But no matter when it falls, I have found that, much like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, “No one expects the first night of Hanukkah!”
2. Besides, with eight days to work with, it can be Hanukkah almost any time you need it to be. I used this to my advantage for many years.
“When is Hanukkah, Mommy?”
“Oh, not for weeks and weeks.”
“But they have the big menorah up, at the train station.”
“That means nothing; they do that weeks in advance. You know, like the candy canes and Santa decorations all over the mall before it’s even Thanksgiving? They just want to put people in a holiday mood.”
But eventually, the jig was up.
“But mom, why is it Hanukkah already at Ezra’s house and not at ours?”
I had a few choice words for my friend, Ezra’s mom. But it taught us both Thought No. 3:
3. Get your story straight… and stick to it!
Here are some more tips I have accumulated over the years, through trial and, mostly, error.
4. Begin as you mean to go on.
By which I mean, don’t start down the road of giving one present for each night of Hanukkahh, or I can tell you where you’ll end up: feverishly combing the house, attic to cellar, looking for things you can wrap up and count as gifts: “Oh, look! It’s a pack of gum; there’s only a few sticks missing, maybe I can wrap that up?
Or, maybe I could wrap each stick individually? That’ll buy me two nights for each kid….”
“Judy, they’re not even allowed to chew gum till the braces come off.”
5. Violate the box rule at your peril.
Come what may, when presents are given, each child must receive the exact same number of boxes. Even if one box is big enough to contain a pony, and the other a de-coder ring: a box is a box is a box.
We learned this the year that one child’s gift came in two parts and I wrapped them both, while the other child’s fit in one package.
Oh, the wailing! The crying! The tearful accusations of who loved whom more! That was the year the dinosaur-egg-made-of-sidewalk-chalk, collecting dust in my closet, was pressed into service as a consolation prize.
“Mom! Can we light the candles already? It’s way past sun-down!”
6. Have a fire extinguisher handy. My boys invented something they called “candle bending,” which involved holding one candle near, but not actually in, the flame of another, and twisting it into a bizarre shape… while both candles dripped wax like crazy.
I made them do this in the kitchen, of course. What I didn’t realize — until too late — was that the resulting pool of molten wax, in the bottom of the plastic tray where they were working, was hot enough to start melting the tray right onto the kitchen counter.
What my children would have done to a templeful of olive oil boggles the mind. Instead of one night’s oil lasting for eight, it would have been the other way around.
7. Distraction is key. This is what the chocolate “gelt” coins are for. “Sweeties, don’t you want to play the dreidel game with your friends?
Just come away from those candles before they melt the chocolate.”
8. Dreidel is a rigged game. And unlike every other gambling game I’ve ever seen, the odds are against the house!
How did my ancestors let that happen? Oh well — winning wasn’t the point, anyway. As long as the players are kept liberally supplied with chocolate, nothing else matters.
Candles, chocolate, and gambling — who needs presents!
Happy Hannukah/Hanukkahh/Channuka to all, and to all a good night. Just make sure those candles are out, and cold, before you go to bed.
