It's Thanksgivukkah Again!

Everyone made a big deal about Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlapping last year... but afterwards I realized that in this crazy family, it's an annual affair. Our cousins down in Florida come up each year to celebrate a combined Thanksgiving/Birthday/Hanukkah holiday, so even if we're not lighting candles in a hanukkiah [1] we'll top off Thanksgiving dinner with a birthday cake, followed by a holiday gift exchange. (We try to pick gifts that pack easily and don't weigh much -- but you'd be amazed at what a little creative thinking can do to prevent that from limiting us to gift cards!)

This year was no exception -- and since Thanksgiving is already long past and Hanukkah 2015 receding into history after it, I figured that I'd better get the combined holiday postings up on the blog before 2015 follows them into the history books...!

As usual, we all gathered at the family's Virginia home, where (as usual) my aunt & uncle did a great job of squeezing everybody in and ensuring no one left even thinking of eating again for at least 24 hours.  The Pipsqueak, being a picky eater (and unfortunately proud of it), concentrated on a pre-packaged mac & cheese and a few other items that she liked, but the rest of us pretty much stuffed our faces with turkey and all kinds of yummy side dishes & garnishments.  I was struck by the difference in the "baby" of the family -- somehow, Cousin S turned from toddler into little girl when we weren't looking! Watching Miri with Cousins A & S interact was fun. Even though there was no replay of last year's "hide and seek" game (with "hiding" usually relegated to giggling noisily almost in plain view between bouts of running through the house making enough noise for an entire elementary school's worth of kids), the three rug rats pretty much picked up right where they left off in 2014 and had a great time playing together. (Dude, you know Cousin A ain't gonna like being referred to as a "rug rat," right...?)

After eating (and eating and eating), we had a birthday celebration for Cousin S (who blew out her candles like a champ) and then everyone waddled into the living room for birthday gifts and an exchange of Hanukkah presents. All us overfed grownups sat watching the kids, catching up with each other and reminiscing while kvetching over having eaten too much... while the family's next generation did all they could to burn off all the calories they'd just consumed. (Hey, who says wisdom always comes with age?)

They're not dancing -- the kids took turns trying to pick each other up!

Hanukkah got underway "for real" a few days later, and the Pipsqueak was super-excited to make her own hanukkiah in Sunday school so (even though it sat proudly nearby with candles at the ready), the familiar old hanukkiah we've used every year since I was a baby remained unlit and we used the very modernistic ceramic tile & aluminum hex nut one Miri made by herself. We got together at Mom & Dad's every night to light the candles together, although the 5th night was a very nervous time for all (Dad had his surgery early that day).

The 6th night (immediately after Dad's surgery), AJ had us all signed up for a special Hanukkah & children's shabbat (sabbath) service at the synagogue where Miri attends Sunday school. Mom & Dad stayed home but insisted we go, so Mom packed a dinner for us to take and sent me off to pick up the Pipsqueak with small cooler & hanukkiah in tow. Traffic was so bad that AJ actually got there a few minutes before we did, even though I had a lot less distance to cover. (By the way, I have no idea who the child in the photo belongs to; Miri insisted she wanted me to take a picture of the big Hanukkah bear in the lobby, and I didn't realize the little girl had wandered into frame.)

The room was crowded with families chowing down on pizzas, sandwiches, and all kinds of other foods along with the latkes (potato pancakes) available for a small fee. We finished off our sandwiches and Miri, as usual, ate her way around the crispy edge of the latkes and left the slightly chewier centers for her mommy and uncle to finish off.

As the service began to get underway, the rabbi invited everyone who'd brought a hanukkiah with them to place it on a large table (thoughtfully covered with fireproof metal foil!)  I headed into the crowd with Miri while AJ took photos from our table on the other side of the room...

That's me in the red yarmulke -- Miri is buried somewhere in the crowd. What the photo doesn't show is the panic on my face as, one after another, already-lit candles kept falling out of the hanukkiah so that I had to keep reaching over other already-lit candles to pick them up and put them back where they belonged. (I had plenty of company with this problem.) We eventually returned to our table with just a couple of lightly-singed hairs on my forearm and enjoyed the sight of 32 hanukkiot as the music- and song-filled children's service began. (The photo above still has a couple waiting to be lit, but there were eventually 224 candles burning on that table -- which, of course, attracted the kids like moths to a flame.) It was also a lot of fun to watch my niece spinning around during the draidel song, followed by a drop to the floor that Sarah Bernhardt herself would've found entertaining.

Gotta tie all that hair back
before playing with fire!

The next night was the last night, but due to Dad's recovery we eschewed the originally-planned big celebration for a simple get-together with our aunt & uncle and Cousin E (who also introduced us to her new beau, a guy we're all hoping to see again). As if we needed another sign that the Pipsqueak really isn't so pipsqueakish any more, she helped her Grandpa light the shamos and then used it to light all the other candles herself, making a wish out loud for each one. As on other nights, without any prompting from the grownups present, her wishes included "peace," "good health," and "a better world" -- what better wishes can one have for the future?

Back when AJ & I were children, Mom started a tradition of giving us each one or two small gifts each night of the holiday instead of something really big (or a really big bunch of gifts) one one night. She's continued this tradition with Miri, with a small tweak: she & Dad prepared eight gifts for the Pipsqueak, and had her pick one each night. Since they were all wrapped, Miri had no way to know what she was picking (although she sure did a good job of grilling Grandma for hints!), so it added an extra dimension of fun to the holiday for her. Still, as important as getting a present was for Miri (and she let us know it was important to her!), we're all proud of how she put an emphasis on sharing Hanukkah with the family, and on the very grown-up wishes she made as she lit each of the candles.

Grownups' hands hovered nearby, but the
Pipsqueak did it all on her own!

Everyone commented on how oddly this year's  candles
burned -- we usually don't get such big blobs of wax!

And on that note I'll bring this year's accounting of Miri's Thanksgivukkah to a close with wishes for a happy, healthy holiday season for one and all!

[1] The hanukkiah  (plural: hanukkiot) is a special version of the menorah (a multi-branched candelabrum) that's used for the holiday. The names are semi-interchangeable, but while some menorahs have three branches on either side of a central candle holder the hanukkiah always has four. The central candle, called the shamos or shamash, is lit first, and then it is used to kindle the other candles -- one on the first night, two on the second night, and so on until all eight "lower" candles are lit on the last night of Hanukkah.

[2} Thanks to centuries of transliteration from Hebrew or Aramaic into Western languages, Hanukah, Hannukah, Hanukkah, Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanukkah, Khanukha, and eleventy-seven other spellings are all actually the same holiday!