Just Hanukkah
from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine

I can’t pin point it exactly, but my Hanukkah dilemma definitely began
when I was a little girl. I grew up in upstate New York with a Protestant
but agnostic father, and no mother. I was only vaguely aware that my mother,
who died when I was three, was Jewish.

There is of course, my sixth-grade school photo,
in which a delicate Star of David hangs around
my neck from a thick leather rope. It had been a
gift from my grandmother, my mother’s mother.
I broke the thin gold chain by accident when
changing my shirt. I was so intent on refastening
the Jewish star around my neck that I used the only
thing I could think of, a leather shoe lace pulled from
my work boots.

There was the Yom Kippur I pretended to be sick so that I could stay home from
school. I knew nothing more about the holiday except that the two Jewish kids in
my class did not come to school that day. I wandered around an empty house
wondering what I was supposed to be doing. But I was oddly gratified to know
I would be counted as one of the (3) absent from school that day.

Now, jump ahead many years and I am married- by a Rabbi- to a Jewish man
whose family celebrated Hanukkah but with a “little” Christmas on the
side. It was not the celebration of their neighbors; a Christmas that was holy
and historic and deeply meaningful. It was a secular Christmas, more like
the one I had had as a child - mainly Santa Claus.

So naturally, my husband and I celebrated Christmas, a little from him
and a little more from me.

We didn’t buy a tree, although I did decorate our front door with a
wreath smelling of fresh pine and hung with red glass bulbs. We exchanged
gifts on the morning of December 25th. I played Bing Crosby records on my record
player and I sang along like my father used to. It didn’t matter that I was Jewish. Did it?

In 1987 when my first son , Sam was born he was welcomed into the
Covenant of Abraham with a traditional Bris. Lucky for me (and my husband)
Jewish law dictates that Judaism is passed on from one generation to the next
through the mother- so my son is Jewish because I am Jewish- and I am Jewish
because my mother was Jewish.

I liked knowing this, for no other reason than because being Jewish
was my birthright. That it belonged to me and I belonged to it. It was a gift
from my mother, like the necklace was a gift from my grandmother.
Along came December 25th, the first with our new son, and we had our
little “Christmas”. Santa arrived and filled our stockings. The following
year, Sam made a Menorah at his preschool- which happened to be at the JCC-
so we lit that, too. This goes on for a while- a little “Christmas” with a little
Hanukkah on the side.

“You don’t have to talk about any of this Santa Claus stuff when you’re
at school. Okay Sam?” I told my son. I was clearly beginning to feel guilty
but I tried to ignore it.

Over the next few years, along with Passover with my in-laws, Rosh
Hashana (when my second son, Ben was born) and Yom Kippur, which I have
since learned a great deal about- celebrating even a “little” Christmas seemed
more and more wrong. I felt more and more guilty. And so we decided to phase it
out. And each thing we lost- the first to go were the red stockings, trimmed
with white fur, embroidered with our names- I felt myself gaining. I was deciding
who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. Only it had to compete with the
Christmas I remembered as a child. I had to know I wasn’t cheated my children
out of anything. I had to believe they weren’t missing anything. It had to be big.

The morning of our first “big” Hanukkah , we woke up early and ran
downstairs to open our eight gifts a piece , all displayed in front of the fire
place. And then there was the Hanukkah we tried having seven tiny gifts
each night and then a whole big bunch the last night. By the time Sam was
old enough to start Hebrew school, I knew this wasn’t going to work, not if
I was going to be who I wanted to be. So who was it I wanted to be again?

I finally realized it wasn’t enough to try and force Hanukkah take the
place of Christmas. I had to embrace Hanukkah for the festival that it is. I
had to learn that Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday. Hanukkah is not
nearly as important as the High Holy days or as Passover. It is not even as
important as some of those holidays most people have never heard of like
Sukkot or Simchat Torah. But it is important because it is the story of a near
assimilation, the story of Jews imitating the style and Traditions of Greeks
around them . It is the story of what happens when you forget who you are.
There is also the one about a little girl with a tiny Star of David around her neck,
who wanted so badly to know who she was.

Now, my boys are 13 and 10. We have a Hanukkah every year for eight nights
in our house, and one of those nights we invite as many friends as we can.
We have enough jelly doughnuts to give all of us bellyaches. My girlfriend
makes her special potato latkes. We put out bowls of sour cream and apple
sauce. We exchange small gifts. The kids eat chocolate coins and I spend the
next week picking crumpled tin wrappers from the floor. I play my Klezhmer
music CD on my CD player.

We light our Menorahs to remember the miracle of Hanukkah, the oil that
lasted for eight days. And all the small miracles that can happen in every life.

We are making our own holiday memories. Like the one night I put the
Menorah with all eight candles fully flaming in the dining room window, too
near the tissue paper dreidels. Really, you hardly notice the charred wood
windowsill at all since I’ve painted it. The paper dreidels disappeared all
together.

Or like the first year, Sam was able to recite all three Hebrew blessings.
Better yet, the first year I was able to recite all three Hebrew blessings.
We watch to see whose candle will be the very last to burn out and that
person gets to make a special wish as the tiny spiral of smoke disappears
up into the air.

When we drive through our neighborhood around the end of December, Ben
is fond of pointing out houses that are decorated with sparkling strings of
lights or colorful trees peering out of living rooms. His favorite are the homes
with one single white light in every window.

But I am quite certain he is not jealous. He does not feel left out. He does not
think he is missing anything. On the contrary, just as those people know who
they are and are enjoying the beauty of their holiday, my children know who
they are. And with that I believe I have given them a greater gift than could be
unwrapped any December 25th, or any 24th of Kislev or any morning, of any life.

We are Jewish and we celebrate Hanukkah, not too big not too little.
Just Hanukkah.

Originally appeared in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine on Nov. 12, 2000

1. Just Hanukkah

2. Finding Home

3. On Writing for Children
and Children Writing

4. Art, Romance, Life, Howard Munce and Me

©2003, Nora Baskin