The Real Meaning of Chrismukkah
I guess I never figured us as an “interfaith” family. I’ve always celebrated Christmas and had a few year where we lit the candles. Jenn was a big proponent of celebrating Chanukkah and I happily went along for the ride. Without kids, we would play dreidel for a while until someone held a commanding gelt lead and we’d call it a night. Prayers were half-heartedly said, but the candles sure did look nice.Now, once with the kids and the not going so much to temple, celebrating holidays becomes more nuanced. Luckily (or rather tragically), Hallmark and other associated holiday industrial complex companies have supplied up with a wide range of holiday mascots (Santa, Easter Bunny, Turkeys & Pilgrims, Skeletons and Pumpkins, Hearts, Punxatawny Phil, etc.) Judah Maccabee just doesn’t hold the buying power that those other folks have engendered. So you’re left to fend for yourselves to figure out how to fill your house with Chanukkah cheer. And, like many Jewish traditions, Chanukkah comes without ribbons, it comes without tags. It comes without packages, boxes, or bags. It downright makes my puzzler sore. So this year, we sang songs, lit the menorah (both the traditional and Leda’s play one), played our dreidel, ate our latkes and donuts, received gelt and some presents. We glossed over the prayers but we talked about what made us happy. Every night, we would ask Leda to tell us what made her happy and to be thankful for that. I guess that’s our version of the opiate. We’ve fully incorporated a pop-culture neologism. Save rambling rant above, we did have a wonderful december with many presents (books for Chanukkah and toys for Christmas). Photos are up in albums. Here we’ve chosen to show both holidays and the fun we had. Note the Chrismukkah tree.
