Category Archives: Hanukkah

Dec 25 2016
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Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule

Brightest and Best

Some folks open their advent calendar windows in the morning, but we are more of a nighttime household; we like to hold the open window up to a light source in the darkness in order to illuminate the scene within. And tonight, in these wee small hours of Christmas Eve becoming Christmas Day, now that all the company has left, my mom and dad, my sister, my nephews, their wives and their kids… it is again just Seth and me and Haden the cat, here next to me atop a basket beside the Christmas tree. We opened tonight’s advent calendar window––the last of them, now that Christmas is here. The scene is lovely, as is the night.

This time each Christmas Eve, these moments when most of the folks around me are tucked into bed, are each year some of my favorite. Wishes abound this time of year for peace and for joy… and these are the moments when they seem most tangible. It is quiet and the darkness is, as Dylan Thomas wrote, close and holy. The lights we use to illuminate the midwinter night pierce the darkness with warmth. It may have been a month or more of madness leading up to this moment, but now that Christmas is here, there is not much left to do but enjoy its presence.

The nights now are their darkest but our hearts are open and our celebrations all focus on bringing light to that darkness. Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, all involve candles, all call down the light, all invite us to be a light ourselves, a light in the darkness. And this I wish for you: that you be a light, that you encourage that light in others. Pure and simple.

If I have it in me, and I think I do, I’ll be writing again this year about each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Just as there is more than one way of reckoning time, there is, as well, more than one way of reckoning these Twelve Days. We subscribe to the notion that Christmas is a season outside ordinary time beginning with Christmas Eve, blossoming into Christmas Day, which then moves into the Twelve Days of Christmas, half of which are in the old year, half in the new. Christmas is just beginning. Sit a spell with us, here in this close and holy darkness, and enjoy it. Merry Christmas.

 

Dec 06 2015
2 Comments
Advent, Hanukkah

Enter the Light Bearers

Candlelight

Last night, with the Eve of St. Nicholas, we celebrated the first of the gift bearers, and tonight, Hanukkah begins. It is a moveable festival in the Jewish calendar, a festival of lights, this year the first of many nights where light is celebrated. And this is no surprise in this time of darkness, for we are fast on the approach to Midwinter: the longest night of the year. Light is what we seek.

Hanukkah commemorates an historical event in ancient Jerusalem in which a small flask of oil kept the lamp of the Temple burning for eight days and nights, much longer than it ever should have, long enough for a new supply of oil to be attained at a time when the prospect of attaining that oil looked bleak. This miracle of the oil is commemorated with each Hanukkah celebration through the lighting of the menorah, a candelabra of nine candles: one central candle and eight others, one for each of those eight nights.

Just as the oil of the temple lamp is central to Hanukkah, so is oil in the traditional foods of the holiday. Much of it is fried in hot oil. The most famous (and the ones that would get me to the table faster than anyone) are potato latkes and jelly doughnuts. The latkes are pancakes made from shredded potatoes, served with apple sauce and a dollop of sour cream. And any celebration that involves homemade doughnuts of any kind, be they jelly or plain or cinnamon, is no small cause for joy.

Our neighbor Old Aunt Sarah, who has been here in Lake Worth longer than anyone, doesn’t do much cooking these days, but some years, if the mood strikes her, she does make latkes for Hanukkah. Old Aunt Sarah’s latkes were the first I ever tasted. When she makes them, she makes them in large batches, and sends some over to Seth and me. We don’t see her often, but when we do, it is always a joy and a wonder, like the time she strolled over and peered over the garden fence and her gray eyes lit up when she saw the nasturtiums we were growing. “Nasturtiums!” she said, as she gazed upon those peppery blooms. She seemed transported. “I don’t think I’ve said that word since I was a child.”

It also happens to be, tonight, the Second Sunday of Advent, when we light two purple candles on our Advent wreath. Again, light increasing, for last week we had only one candle lit on our approach to Christmas, so tonight, that light is doubled. Old Aunt Sarah’s childlike wonder is central to Advent and to Hanukkah. We bring light, ever increasing light, to a dark time.  Old Aunt Sarah and we wish you that wonder. We, collectively––Aunt Sarah, you, me––we are the light bearers. It is up to each of us.

Image: “Candlelight,” a painting by Philippe Brouillard, 2015. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Dec 16 2014
4 Comments
Hanukkah

Miracle of the Oil

Piechowski_Women_at_the_stove

I’ll admit it right here and now: I don’t know much about Hanukkah. I know that there are latkes, potato pancakes fried golden brown and served with apple sauce and sour cream and I like those, and I learned just today from a friend that jelly doughnuts are part of the celebration, too, and I am definitely easy to be found whenever there is a good doughnut nearby. And I know the gist of the celebration, revolving around a small flask of oil that kept the lamp of the Temple at Jerusalem burning for eight days and nights, much longer than it ever should have, long enough for a new supply of oil to be attained, and this is the miracle that is commemorated with each Hanukkah celebration, each lighting of the menorah.

Hanukkah is another festival of lights. We see these festivals in cultures across the globe, but it is fitting, I think, that so many occur now, in these darkest nights of the year on the approach to the winter solstice. This year, Hanukkah begins with the setting sun tonight, December 16, and lasts for eight days and nights. It is a movable celebration: Last year it happened to begin just before Thanksgiving, and one year not long ago, perhaps 2005, it coincided with Christmas. Old Aunt Sarah across the street made latkes that year and shared some with Seth and me. It was cold here that December, like it’s been this year, and the chill of the winter nights brought her back to her childhood and the dark nights of Hanukkah frying latkes with her mother in North Carolina, the place from whence Old Aunt Sarah hails. We enjoyed latkes that year because she had set the smoke alarm off a few times in making them, and Seth had gone over to check on her. She only makes latkes in large batches, she told him. It’s the only way she knows.

“Here, have some,” she said. She put a latke on a plate and then, next to it, a dollop of apple sauce. And then she put a whole bunch on a bigger plate. “Take some to your friend.” That’s me. That was on Christmas Eve, and that year our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of many fishes, which is our Southern Italian custom, included also many latkes. It was a pretty good combination.

This year, Hanukkah begins tonight and ends on Christmas Eve. Who knows, we may have latkes with our Christmas Eve dinner again, should Old Aunt Sarah be up to it. We’ll listen for the smoke alarm.

 

Image: Women at the Stove by Wojciech Piechowski. Oil on oak, 1888. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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