Might as well make merry

     The holiday cookies are at the front of the store as you walk in — they know their business at Sunset Foods — and I was pausing to admire them when a burst of plaid entered my field of vision. Ron Bernardi, whose four uncles, the Cortesi brothers, started Sunset in 1937. Or, more accurately, a red plaid tuxedo jacket with Ron Bernardi inside. He was joyous. 

    "Get the shoes," he ordered, when I took a photo close in, concentrating on the jacket, and I stepped back to capture the full effect.
     Ron is 81, and has worked at Sunset longer than I have been alive. I can't recount our conversation Monday except that he had me feel the velvet of his lapels. I wished him Merry Christmas and he wished me Happy Holidays as other shoppers — the parking lot was full — nudged me aside to claim their Ron time.
     I've heard people say that this holiday is muted, between our nation electing a moron as its  president, again, and ... well, that's about it, isn't it? But honestly, I don't feel downcast. Myself, I find the holidays highly welcome. Might as well be festive; we'll have reason aplenty to be glum in February. 

The plaid jacket had these sunglasses 
in the pocket when Ron got them, no 
doubt to shield the original owner from 
the harsh Vegas sun.

    

     Maybe it helps that Hanukkah begins on Christmas Day, one of those rare congruences when the two holidays line up. We're partying at the same time this year. Otherwise Hanukkah ranges over the calendar, starting as early as Nov 28, or as late as Dec. 27 (in 2013, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving overlapped).  Since Jews, like Muslims, are old school, and set their holidays based on a lunar calendar. 

     We aren't holding our family party until toward the end of Hanukkah's 8-day span (it runs until Jan. 2). But we have to fit everyone's ever-more-complex schedules. Twos boys, both married in the past year, two new brides, flitting around the globe like luna moths.
     "Thirty people," my wife said, looking around the kitchen with a flash of desperation.

     Nothing fancy. Beer, brats, latkes — since EGD has so many new readers, and Jews have slipped a bit from their position as America's Official Also-Ran Faith, I should probably explain that a latke is a potato pancake fried in oil. 

     Hanukkah being close to Christmas might increase the usual confusion of what the holiday is actually about,  and sometimes non-Jews query me: "Hanukkah is sort of your Christmas, yes?"

     No, it's not. It's more like V-E Day. Hanukkah celebrates a military victory — the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after the surprise triumph of Judah and his Maccabees over the occupying Greek-Syrian army in 200 BC. (I could expand upon this fact to make several salient points about more current events. But it's Christmas so let's keep it light. My guess is that crowing about military victories won't be quite so enthusiastic this year).

     Previously, I've compared Hanukkah to Arbor Day, grown massive by its proximity to Christmas, like those ants exposed to radiation in a 1950s horror flick. I hobbyhorsed the Arbor Day metaphor at length in one of the first columns I wrote for an online platform — actually, one of the first columns anybody wrote for an online platform, as this was in 1996 for American Online. It was a surprise feature, an Easter egg — back then,  you would click on the AOL logo and get a cartoon, or an essay. The editor was John Scalzi, who went on to considerable wealth and fame as a science fiction writer (I recommend his Collapsing Empire trilogy; much fun).

    We spin dreidels — sigh, four-sided tops used in ancient gambling — sing Hanukkah songs which really lag behind Christmas carols. It seems unfair that Jews gave the world "White Christmas" and "Frosty the Snowman" and "Jingle Bell Rock" and half the songs on the radio this time of year, but when it comes to honoring our own holiday it's "I Have a Little Dreidel" which is really like fingernails on a chalkboard, and "Rock of Ages." What cannot be avoided must be endured.

     The moment I really like is lighting the menorahs in the window. Usually Jewish holidays are interior — around the table — or closed away in a synagogue, such as on Yom Kippur. The lighting candles on Hanukkah is really the one moment when the religion really confronts the outside world, lighting our candles against the darkness and saying, "Hey, Jews on your block. Get over it." 

     Well...I think that'll do. It's Christmas after all, nearly. And Hanukkah, almost.