It’s maybe not shocking that Hanukkah will get the brief finish of the stick relating to the much-beloved winter holidays. In any case, Christmas is a veritable explosion of trimmed bushes and Santa and celebrations that final for a complete season, whereas Hanukkah normally will get relegated to teeny-tiny shows in shops. However rising up in an interfaith family, by which I celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas, my yearly Hanukkah traditions are simply as necessary to me because the Christmas ones.
For me, even once I was a child, it’s by no means been about eight nights of holiday presents. (Though it’s develop into a yearly ritual for my sister and I to obtain pajamas and calendars, whilst adults.) As a substitute, Hanukkah has all the time represented the perfect of family tradition: Gathering across the eating room desk and chowing down on tender brisket whereas latkes sizzle within the kitchen. Then, all of us mild the menorah, fastidiously choosing out every colourful candle one after the other, and watch them glow within the reflection of the window.
Once I went off to varsity and was unable to be with my household for each night time of Hanukkah, I even remodeled dreidel right into a consuming sport – and I principally delighted in teaching my non-Jewish friends what every Hebrew letter stood for. (As somebody who by no means went to Hebrew faculty or was notably spiritual, passing on the information of the sport – albeit with alcohol as a substitute of cash or gelt – made me really feel proud.)
There’s a sure sense of coziness within the repetition of traditions, in understanding that because the world adjustments round us, the customs will all the time be there, unchanged, reminding us of the significance of household and celebration and harkening us again to childhood. It provides me a sense of belonging, understanding that individuals all around the world are collaborating in their very own Hanukkah customs, particularly when Jewish holidays have been forbidden at completely different factors all through historical past.
There’s a kids’s film I liked as a child – “Chanukah at Bubbe’s” – by which one of many Muppet-like characters fortunately declares that he’s proud to be Jewish and that lighting the menorah makes him really feel a heat glow inside. Once I partake in Hanukkah rituals, I join with my very own Jewish id and what that appears like for me. As somebody who grew up interfaith, my Judaism has by no means been about getting Bat Mitzvahed or which mum or dad is the one who handed down their heritage to me. As a substitute, once I sing the Hanukkah blessings or dip a latke into applesauce and even merely unwrap a chunk of gelt, I immediately really feel tethered to my childhood, my household, my ancestors. It’s by means of the ritual of those traditions that my Jewish id comes alive, because it has all the time been a cultural, familial expertise for me, fairly than a spiritual one.
In 2020, within the midst of the pandemic, my sister and I every moved out of our completely different residences and had been capable of spend all eight nights of Hanukkah with our mother and father for the primary time in a few decade. As a substitute of scrambling to cram the vacation into the one random night time all of us would have been capable of get collectively, we had been capable of savor the celebration over the course of the week. There have been no rushed meals dictated by prepare schedules, no mad sprint of unwrapping current after current simply to get by means of all eight without delay. It was a tough 12 months for apparent causes, nevertheless it additionally gave us an opportunity to really relish the vacation, and apply each ritual completely.
Nonetheless, that’s the factor about traditions: Irrespective of the place you might be, or who you’re with, the vacation and all of its trimmings will nonetheless exist – no matter how one can observe it.
Associated: 9 Hanukkah Recipes That Aren’t Just Latkes
Michelle McGahan was a PS contributor.
