Happy Hammer Time

This very morning back in 167 BCE, ancient Jews arose sleepily from their straw mats and exclaimed, "Fuck. It's already Hanukah? This is bullshit. It was Thanksgiving just last week! We're still finishing the cranberry sauce in the fridge! Stupid lunisolar calendar."

And the ancient Jewish mamas jumped on their elephants and rode to McDonalds to get Happy Meals from which they extracted the stupid plastic toys to wrap as gifts for their kids that first night. Because eight fucking gifts.

Robin and I don't really celebrate Hanukah now that it's just the two of us in the house. We light the candles sometimes, like, maybe one or two nights out of the eight, and our gifts are the normal shit we buy for ourselves and tell the other, "look what you got me for Hanukah."

And the other says, "Oh, that's cool. I have really good taste."

And then we laugh merrily, and retreat to our separate bedrooms until morning.

I love the beautiful traditions of my people.

We don't make latkes for just the two of us. It's a lot of work. And we have enough latkes in our arteries to last for a decade of Hanukahs. The real miracle is that any Jews are still alive, at all.

Plus, there's this: The Maccabees were assholes.

They were all, like, if you aren't a religious Jew, you are against us. Which totally harshed the mellow of the ancient cultural secular progressive Jews; the ones who enjoyed a little bit of shrimp in their lo mein, who - if their waitress forgot to hold the B on their BLT-hold-the-B - just went ahead and ate it because it doesn't count as a sin to eat bacon if you got it on your sandwich by mistake, the Jews who snuck in a slice or two of Dave's Killer 27 Seed Wheat Bread during Passover because a week of just matzo is truly the eleventh plague - hemorrhoids. There should be a small tube of Preparation H on the seder plate.

So, about two thousand years ago, Judah and his Maccabees decided that the only good Jews were super  religious Jews. The rest of us were pretty much enemies of The (Chosen) People.  It was - and I apologize to those of you who will not get the joke - Hammer Time in ancient Syria.

So, I'm conflicted at Hanukah. Not a fan of in-your-face religious zealots. Although also not a fan of those who wish to kill them, either. Not a big fan of war. 

So this Hanukah I am going to celebrate being conflicted. The war within.

I will eat chicken for eight nights, because I'm conflicted about not being a vegetarian; I will sign an online petition every night for eight nights, because I'm conflicted about whether or not they do any good; I will let my roots grow out for a week, wear short booties with capri-length pants each day, and I will watch TV shows that feature actors I know are Republican.

And I will feel bad about all of it. Which is really the point. As I often pointed out to my kids, "the important thing is that you feel bad."
(I also wrote a novel with that same title. THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU FEEL BAD. Which was rejected. Three times, even after I took the agent's notes and did the rewrites. I feel bad about it. Which is the point of the novel. Irony stings.)

I might eat a few chocolate coins this week because chocolate, but on the other hand, they are really shitty  chocolates. They taste gross. The Jewish endcap items do not sell out here in Oregon so they probably bring the same gelt out each year. It's really old chocolate.

Ancient, even.

The leftover ones from the Happy Meals back in 167 B.C.E.

B.C.E. You know, before Chocolate Evolved. 

Now, that's a holiday I can get behind.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Claudia Reilly]

Oh this is so wise and funny and wonderful! This is the BEST Hanukkah gift of all!