Living Small

End of Chanukkah

Last night was the last night of Chanukkah, which is always my favorite because I love to see all of the candles burning.  When I was a kid, I often got the largest gift on the last night, so that was fun too.  One thing I like about Chanukkah is that even if the holiday catches me by surprise, as it did this year, I have eight days to get caught up!  I did finally get a gift for David on Sunday -- a pair of mittens to replace the ones he recently lost.  As I told him, though, the mittens weren't the gift (he would have eventually bought them for himself anyway) -- the gift was that I went out and got them for him so that he wouldn't have to do it himself.  Of course, I was worried that I would get the wrong ones and have to return them, negating the whole point of the gift and adding more work, but they were just right and he has worn them for the past two days.  I still didn't get quite caught up enough, however -- even though I had eight days to remember, I never managed to get a lighter or a book of matches, so we lit the shammus on the stove every night!  It occurs to me, however, that the whole system of lighting all the candles from one candle is perfectly designed for those of us who have trouble producing a flame: imagine how much harder it would have been to light all the candles on the stove!

Happy Chanukkah!

Chanukkah pretty much snuck up on me this year.  Granted, it is earlier than usual, but I never feel quite prepared.  Not that there is a whole lot to prepare, other than making sure I have candles for the menorah and thinking of a gift for David.  This year I did manage to get the candles a whole day early, but totally failed on the gift.  The other thing I failed to do was get something to light the candles with!  Back in the days of our charcoal grill, we always had either matches or a lighter on hand to light the charcoal (or, rather, the newspaper that we would put in the bottom of the charcoal starter).  Now that we have switched to gas and our dinner doesn't depend on being able to produce a flame (well, there are still flames involved, but they come from an automatic ignition) we don't seem to have any kind of fire-starting device around the house (you can tell that we are not smokers!).  In the end, we used the stove to light the shammus, which felt a bit silly but worked just fine.  Today I'll try to remember to stop by a party store* to get a new lighter.

*For the longest time I thought "party store" was a Michigan euphemism for liquor store, though David insisted they were two different things.  Earlier this year, in my GIS training, I learned that party stores and liquor stores are actually licensed differently, but I didn't learn what the difference between the licenses is.

Easter

I hope that readers who celebrate Easter had a wonderful holiday yesterday.  Readers who don't celebrate Easter can probably relate to the frustration I experienced over these conversations.

Saturday phone call:
Friend: Have a good Easter.
Emily: Thanks. (awkward pause) Um, actually I'm Jewish.
Friend: I know -- what do you guys do for Easter?
Emily: Easter isn't on our calendar, but this time of year we have a holiday called Passover. It started last Monday night and goes until Tuesday.

Sunday phone call:
Same friend: I know you're Jewish, but happy Easter anyway.
Emily: Thanks, happy Easter to you too.

I know that my friend had only the best of intentions, but it still seems rather inconsiderate. After all, I don't call my non-Jewish friends and wish them a happy Pesach. The assumptions that Christians make about Judaism also bother me. They figure that, since Jesus was Jewish, Jews have some kind of relationship with Jesus. Also, since Jesus' last supper was a seder, they figure that Passover is somehow about Jesus or that Jesus invented Passover. Living in the United States, one is pretty much forced to know quite a bit about Christianity since it is all around us. For example, we all know when Christmas is because we have the day off work, and we all know when Easter is because the grocery stores are full of candy eggs and we hear the Pope's Easter service on NPR. Yet, the Christian majority can get away with knowing absolutely nothing about Judaism, or Islam, or any other religion for that matter.