A Hanukka Carol

Viewpoint: That everything can be argued may be our Hanukka present to the world.

By ANNE ROIPHE
hanukka (do not publish again) (photo credit: avi katz)
hanukka (do not publish again)
(photo credit: avi katz)
IT COMES TO ME ON A LATE NOVEMBER DAY, WHEN the dark suddenly descends so early I feel as if someone is stealing away the hours of my life, that it really is time to invent a new holiday for the winter months. Hanukka is fine enough, but every time it comes up someone says: “Ah, if you were a proud Jew, then you wouldn’t need a big Hanukka. It’s just a minor holiday, puffed up by anxious American Jews to compete with Christmas so our children don’t allow the worm of envy into their hearts.” This oft repeated fact, and I don’t deny it’s a fact, is also a way of saying: “Oh, you, you are not a real Jew. Areal Jew wouldn’t fuss over Hanukka. Shabbat is sufficient and there are at least four of them in December. If you were a religious Jew, you wouldn’t feel you had to give presents to your children to ensure their loyalty. You wouldn’t have to inoculate them against Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus’s jingling bells outside the department stores. You wouldn’t have to place gigantic menorahs outside your houses of worship and you wouldn’t need to purchase a federal mint’s worth of gold-covered Hanukka gelt chocolate coins that turn stale long before they’re all consumed.”
There is a certain smugness bouncing off those who say that to others, but it is not entirely wrong. Hanukka is a defensive holiday, a sandbag against the caroling and the TV specials and the crèche in the school play.
Every time I am about to buy Hanukka paper to cover the presents I am bringing to grandchildren, I see the blue paper is in the smaller section and the silver Christmas bells are hanging everywhere. Since this is America and Christmas is both a Christian celebration and a national spending spree, a combination of blinking lights, happy song and an anthem of belief in the great religion of Wal-Mart, as well as a demonstrably ineffective wish for peace on earth, it is perfectly natural that Christmas dominates the scene. Hanukka with its candle-lighting, its potato pancakes and its family dinners is all very well, but I doubt the kids are fooled. It is not the same as Christmas and even if I wanted to make it seem so, some self-appointed guardian of the faith would make me feel insufficiently Jewish.
How can I complain that Hanukka can’t vanquish Christmas? I live in the Diaspora. Jews don’t dominate the culture in the galut, unless they live in tiny enclaves and shut out all the rest of the cultural noise. And if you do that, you end up in your own confined space and your own historical time, which may be fine for some of us but hardly for us all.
But Hanukka has another problem. The Maccabees, in their determination to defeat the Hellenists, to prevent any kind of assimilation, would have limited the life choices of the generations to follow if they had been able. They were fierce nationalists and their conviction of righteousness and Jewish destiny is to be admired today, but with more than a few reservations. When we tell the story to our children, we honor the arms they took up so long ago, as well as the intolerance they showed, the isolation and distance they demanded from the passions of the other societies around them. And the truth is that I can’t think of a Maccabee who would approve of my politics, my faith, my leisure reading, my fondness for Flaubert and Anthony Trollope. (I skim the anti-Semitic passages.) If I think of Hanukka as a fine national holiday, which we shouldn’t examine too closely, then all is well. If I think of it as an early nationalistic statement of purity that would have rejected the enlightenment and all that came with it, I am not so happy.
And I agree with the critics of an American Hanukka with presents upon presents, as if our children really needed to be bribed to stay with us. I also understand that Jewish festivals like Jewish politics are not for the faint-hearted. Someone will believe absolutely what I believe partially. Someone will believe in a rush to arms when I am hoping for dialogue. That everything can be argued may be our Hanukka present to the world.
So this Hanukka, as the December darkness arrives, I will deplore the blood shed by the hardy band of warriors. I will admire the eight-night miracle of the oil. I would never underestimate the importance of signs and symbols. But… there is always a but. We have to admit that Hanukka in America is a fancy balancing act, outglitzed by Christmas, and its authenticity questioned by the purer-than-thou crowd. Never mind. I am going to enjoy it and look at the candlelight reflected in the faces of friends and family and hope that the critical tongues will all be silent. Mine among them.
Contributing author Anne Roiphe is a novelist and journalist living in New York.