Menorah Memories

 Oh dear.

What you must think of me. 

Having spent all this time going on and on about "the holidays" without once making reference to the Festival of Lights celebrated each year around this time by our Jewish friends. Keeping in mind that sour old excuse of "I have lots of Jewish friends," I did find myself wondering just how I might have made this seemingly casual oversight. 

Except that I just checked and the only mention I can find in twenty plus years of writing this blog about Hanukkah are one from twelve years ago about a dust-up with a local PTA and "the war on Christmas" and another just a few days back that referenced the massacre at Bondi Beach.

Maybe that's because I have been programmed like so many public employees to steer clear of designating a particular holiday when encouraging folks to have happy ones. I seem to have unwittingly picked a side when it comes to the much ballyhooed War On Christmas.

And yet when I look back over the totality of my writing here on this bleeding heart's paradise, I can find dozens of references specifically to that "other December holiday," and I am not referring to Kwanza. Nope. I'm busy a couple times each year promoting memories and wishes about the yuletide season, even if I am not sure how it is that yule is influenced by the moon. 

I might like to pretend that I am merely a vessel of the predominant culture, capable of gushing about everyone's sacred days and respecting them equally. Which is kind of a sham since I have participated in just a few scattered nights of Hanukkah in my sixty-three years and have instead brashly assumed that those Jewish friends I recognize so freely would not mind dropping by to share in the wonders of a Christmas morning with all the tinsel and trimmings. 

Even now as I attempt to right this wrong, I have spent paragraphs going on about how challenged I am by this gaping hole in my otherwise open mind. There's a tricky little metaphor. 

So here goes: Blessings to all of you who celebrate the miracle of the oil and how the Maccabees were able to make that one night's worth last for eight. And I apologize that I seem to have had approximately ten times the interest in Hanukkah than I have on Black Friday. 

Just wait until next year...