Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Our First Hanukkah!

Can you believe it? Here I am, thirty-eight years old, and this year is the first year I've ever been invited to a Hanukkah party! Leo totally got into it:


Ready for some dreidel action!

He learned about Hanukkah at school, so he was excited to see the traditions live:



And me too, actually.



I remember as a kid that it was fun to learn Hanukkah songs as well as Christmas songs for the school holiday performance, some thirty years ago. Bizarrely enough, this has become a subject of great controversy in the past few years thanks to Bill O'Reilly. I think it's pretty reasonable to teach about different traditions, however, as long as the school is making a good-faith effort to be inclusive of the different traditions.

11 comments:

Sh- said...

Great post!

simplysarah said...

Looks like fun!

Since childhood I've always loved potato latkes and dreidel games. Someday if I have kids, I figure that if we're going to celebrate christmas, we're going to celebrate hanukkah too. :)

C. L. Hanson said...

Thanks Sh-!!!

Hey Simply Sarah!!!

That's a good idea. I like to include elements of different traditions in my holiday celebration! :D

galen dara said...

love this!
my kindergartner came home the other day with drawings of menorah's and talking about hanukkah... I really need to build on that a bit. (also thinking of adding a bit of solstice to our seasons festivities too!)

thanks for sharing yours :)

C. L. Hanson said...

Thanks G!!!

My son drew an adorable picture of a menorah after the party -- I wish I'd had a scanner handy so I could have included it in this post! :D

The Sinister Porpoise said...

I never really liked the Pennsylvania Dutch equivalent, potato pancakes. I doubt I'd like latkes either.

(Can't tell you why either. Maybe it had to do with my mother's poor cooking skills.)

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Sinister Porpoise!!!

They're apparently not so easy to make. My friend (who threw this party) decided to just buy the latkes, rather than bothering with the risk that they wouldn't turn out. They were quite good. :D

Anonymous said...

Man, I'm so jealous. I'd love to celebrate Hanukkah; I think it would be both fun and educational.

King Aardvark said...

Now I want a dreidel. Where I'm from there isn't a huge Jewish population so we never got any serious exposure to Hanukkah (we knew they had a menorah and that was about it).

Any Adam Sandler music involved?

The Sinister Porpoise said...

The Pennsylvania Dutch food is easy to make, it's fried mashed potatoes, essentially.

If latkes use potato flour, they are likely closer to potato bread than potato pancakes and might be worth trying.

I'm a picky eater anyway.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Chaplain!!!

It was fun -- I'm really glad that my friend (who celebrates Hanukkah with her own kids) invited us to her party! It was just three families, and I don't know if the other family was Jewish or not.

Hey King Aardvark!!!

Nope, they didn't play Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song. It's too bad, too, because I love that one! I keep meaning to add it to my holiday playlist.

Hey Sinister Porpoise!!!

Actually, the way my friend described latkes, she said that you have to grind up potatoes and onions in the food processor, and that the tricky part is to get all of the water out so that they can be fried. So they're probably closer to potato pancakes than they are to potato bread.