All I Want For Chanukah

All I Want For Chanukah

This year Chanukah has been the same, yet different. Usually the only thing that changes is the date. Since the Jewish calendar is a lunar one, the dates of all the Jewish holidays change from year to year. Somewhat like Goldilocks’ dilemma, sometimes they’re too early, sometimes too late, and sometimes just right. So there are years when Chanukah comes out at the end of December, or nicely in the middle of the month, and sometimes it appears at the end of November. One year when Lisa was in pre-school we celebrated Chanukah right after Thanksgiving. The kids had just finished learning about turkeys and Plymouth Rock when they began studying Judah Maccabee. Lisa came home and informed me that the pilgrims lit Chanukah menorahs. Sometimes it’s just way too early.

This year since the first night of Chanukah was on Friday night, Mariel excitedly told us that she would be able to come home. Her one problem was that her store manager had informed everyone that no one was allowed to take any vacation time until after Christmas. So she successfully called the employee-complaint hot line that her store had set up, to protest not being able to celebrate her holiday. She takes her Chanukah seriously!

Lisa called to tell me that she would be coming home Saturday night and asked if she could bring her boyfriend, Matt. That meant that we would have a nice full house. Knowing that my girls would be home for the week-end gave my spirits a much needed lift.

Like most people these days we’re watching our budget. This year though we wouldn’t be buying any flat-screen TV’s or vacation packages, I wanted to give the girls small gifts. That was how Chanukah was always traditionally celebrated--- with family, food and chocolate coins for playing the dreidel game. We have our own tradition when it comes to chocolate. Though I do buy milk chocolate chocolate coins to fill our plastic dreidels I also stock up on Godivas. That’s one thing I didn’t change.

I also fulfilled another family tradition. I bought too many boxes of Chanukah candles. Every year because we light several menorahs each night, I’m always sure that I’m going to run out so I buy extra candles. Then I come home to find that I already had fifty boxes in our Chanukah box in the attic. Every year I swear that I will not buy more candles and then every year I do. Some things never change.

This was the year that I finally emptied out the Chanukah box. I have too many heavy-duty plastic storage containers in the attic, two of which are dedicated to the trappings of Chanukah and Passover. They’re mostly filled with all of the holiday decorations that Lisa and Mariel had created in kindergarten and religious school. Our Chanukah container was crammed with colored posters, pasted collages, Judah Maccabees made out of various household items, and deidels. When the kids were little I would decorate the house like a crazy person. I hung banners and dreidels, flags and pictures. I also had plastic menorahs and latkes to stick on the windows ….. talk about tacky. I also created a display in the entry way that included stuffed Chanukah bears (don’t ask!) and menorahs. I hadn’t decorated for years but I couldn’t throw out anything those little hands had created. But this year was different.

Mariel and I went through the box laughing hysterically at all the glittery junk. We saved whatever she wanted and held onto a few things for Lisa to look through. I saved one menorah that Lisa had created when she was about three years old. She had made it out of a wooden paint stirrer, metal bolts, and tons of glitter. We also saved some of the books. It felt great to finally see the bottom of that box. In April we’ll attack the Passover container.

Every year, even though I always look through every potato pancake recipe that appears in the paper, I never really vary how we make our latkes. There really isn’t that much you can change in a recipe whose basic ingredients are potatoes, eggs, salt and flour (and an onion for anyone with the slightest bit of taste, Shatz!) but this year I found an interesting twist. Evidently one grandmother soaked the grated potatoes in ice-water to ensure that the latkes came out really crispy. You see the crispy latke is the holy grail of potato pancake-dom so you always soak every bit of moisture out of the potato mixture before you fry it.
Intrigued I decided to try the cold water bath, though Mariel cast a dubious eye on the ice floating on top of our precious potatoes. Well they were dry all right, so dry that they almost wouldn’t stick together no matter how many eggs I added. Perhaps next year we’ll use a little less ice.

The kids’ present requests were different this year as well. The girls outdid themselves in practicality requesting socks, long underwear, a new computer to replace one that was dying and help with tuition. Where oh where did I go so…....right? That was my gift this year because all I really wanted was for our family to be grateful for what they already had--each other. May that always remain the same.