This is the burden, this is the promise

One of my mother's favorite stories about my childhood involves an answer I gave to our neighbors during the holiday season when they asked what Santa Claus would be bringing me. According to my mom, I smiled brightly and said proudly, "Santa doesn't come to my house!"

Each year, I believe I made a compelling case to my classmates about why Hanukkah was superior to Christmas. Instead of one day of presents, we got eight crazy nights (this was my argument before it was Adam Sandler's, thanks). Hanukkah involved games, like dreidel, during which if you were fortunate you could win a whole pot of coins from the stash my parents kept in a jar in the closet. And Chanukah food, like fried latkes and jelly donuts and chocolate coins, seemed to me to be tastier than Christmas food, in part because my mother raised me to believe that Christmas meals consisted of a single giant ham.

Phil won this platter at our temple for making the best latkes.

By now, most people about the backlash to Hanukkah: that it's really only a minor Jewish holiday, that we've elevated it to outsize status to compete with Christmas as a winter holiday; that the rabbis embellished the alleged miracle of the oil several centuries after the Maccabees actually rededicated the Temple; that maybe it's in poor form to celebrate the fundamentalism of the victorious Maccabees.

Just days ago, the New York Times deigned to publish this embarrassing op-ed, "Saying Goodbye to Hanukkah," in which the author describes how her family celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah as a kid, a tradition she won't continue with her own children because "I am not Jewish and it doesn't feel authentic to celebrate a Jewish holiday religiously." 

How groundbreaking of the New York Times, in the week before Hanukkah begins, to choose to elevate the voice of a non-Jew who admits that the words of the candlelighting prayers are "empty" to her family. Her children, she writes, "need love and connection — no menorah required."

I mean, weird flex, but OK? My child also needs love and connection, and by connection I mean an Internet connection so he can play more dumb video games. 

Here's the thing, though: I like Hanukkah. I like latkes and donuts and fried food, sure, and I like singing "Light One Candle" and reading "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins."

But this year, especially this year, I want — I need — to celebrate a holiday that quite literally honors the idea of flickering lights in the darkness. I want to celebrate a holiday that acknowledges the spirit of perseverence and sticking together, of rededication and rebuilding. I want to celebrate a holiday of miracles.

This afternoon we turned on the TV and the reporters on NY1 were discussing the rollout of the COVID vaccine. Eli's eyes got wide and his mouth fell open. "Mom!" he said. "Mom, look at me. Look at me. There's going to be a cure. For COVID. By my birthday." He paused for maximal impact. "COVID-free birthday! High five!"

Every time I think about all the work, all the brilliant shining minds of scientists and doctors and epidemiologists all over the world who raced to make this happen, I'm overcome by this sense of humanity: that all this time, as I've been shut up in my apartment staring at screens and fighting with my family, scores of people were nevertheless doing their damndest to save our miserable lives.

On the first night of Hanukkah we say the Shecheyanu: "Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, for giving us life, sustaining us and enabling us to reach this season."

We say the Shecheyanu nearly every time we celebrate something for the first time during a year, and I usually feel that I've managed quite capably to reach the season on my own, thank you, not much enabling required. Never before have I felt so deeply the churning of one season into another; the sense that all the years of my life are like interlocking puzzle pieces and 2020 is a blank space.

So this December, when it's cold and dark, I'll light my candles. I will remember that Jews at Theresienstadt in 1942 stole a block of wood from the Nazis and carved it into a menorah. I'll think about the 91-year-old British grandpa who got one of the first vaccines in the world and then told a reporter he intended to hug his granddaughters for Christmas because "there's no point in dying now when I've lived this long."

I'll think about the people who I want to hug, even though they feel far away. I'll say my thanks to everything that's enabled me to reach this season: this season of darkness, but also — I hope — this season of miracles.

Happy Hanukkah.