Festival of Lights
When I told God what I wrote yesterday about sometimes less is more when it comes to putting up your Christmas lights, she brought up something I hadn’t thought of. When it comes to keeping down the number of holiday lights, the Jews have got it all over the Christians. Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, uses just eight lights, and none of those fancy electric or LED things either, just candles.
So I’d like to applaud all my Jewish friends for keeping it simple, but I’d also like to give them a warning. You know guys, Christmas is outselling you; maybe if you’d fancy things up a little you could get a better market share.
Except, of course, that Hannukah is an ersatz holiday in America. Only here is there a big deal with dreydels, menorah and gift giving and the point was, in fact, to compete with Christmas in the hearts of little Jewish boys and girls. Sad, if you ask me. But in any case, Hannukah is *not* part of the religious calendar – it celebrates the Macabee rebellion in Judea about the same time as Christmas – unlike Sabbath, Rosh Hashonah/Yom Kippur and so on. In fact, as holidays go, I’d say Hannukah is basically redundant to Passover since they celebrate such similar underlying themes (e.g., oppression, the right to worship as one chooses, etc.).
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