The simplicity of celebrating Chanukah

I love Christmas. I love looking at all the lights on people's homes and all the twinkling trees inside. I love holiday cookies. And I love how some people fill every inch of their house in Christmas decorations. That being said, I am very happy to celebrate the season vicariously.

With a name like Marilyn Cohen Shapiro, you probably have realized that I have never actually celebrated Christmas. Growing up as the only Jewish family in a tiny upstate New York town, we never had a Christmas tree or strung red and blue lights across our eaves. Once I married Larry under a chuppah in 1974, I continued our own Jewish traditions in December: lighting the menorah, making potato latkes, giving gifts to each other and to our children over the eight days. And never once in my life have I had the urge to celebrate the secular elements of a religious holiday. In honor of Chanukah, here are my eight reasons why. 

• I cannot untangle the wires on my earbuds. How would I ever manage to take yards and yards of Christmas lights out of storage and unwind them to put on a tree?

• In 1996, Larry climbed up on a ladder to shovel snow off the roof. He slipped and fell, shattering his heel. That was the end of his running life. It was also the end of Larry ever climbing up to the roof. The idea of stringing all those lights onto the eaves is frightening.

• I look terrible in red and green. While all my Christian friends "don their gay apparel" from Thanksgiving to Jan. 1, I am content to pull out my Israeli blue sweater, tuck my dreidel earrings into my lobes, and enjoy the holiday season with colors that compliment my blue eyes.

• Remember I said I love to eat holiday cookies. That doesn't mean that I want to BAKE them. I have never done well making sugar cookies, which requires mixing the dough, rolling it out, and then cutting them into cute little shapes. I either made them too thin (i.e. burnt) or too thick (underdone) ... And forget about decorating them with tubes of frosting. I can't DRAW a straight line! How am I to master all those borders and curlicues? 

• Speaking of cookies, I gave up on cookie swaps years ago. I don't need to start baking 30 kinds of cookies in October so I could share with friends whose cookies always looked prettier and tasted better than mine. I will stick to my yearlong custom of baking what are known as "Marilyn's World Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies" and not share a single one. 

• I have friends that have bins and bins of Christmas decorations stored in their attic, garage or expensive storage units. Every inch of their house becomes a winter wonderland. They have multiple trees, dozens of nutcrackers, Christmas towels, napkins, and even toilet paper. My friend Bonnie, who loves to decorate for every holiday, has a twinkling alligator holding a candy cane and sporting a Santa hat, for goodness sake! While I love walking through their homes, I am so glad I am not responsible for putting out all the tchotchkes and then packing them up for storage in January. My single decoration - an electric menorah that sits in my window throughout the eight days of Chanukah is just fine, thank you very much!l

• As my readers know, I love Hallmark Christmas movies. I get to see everything I have written about above in various permutations of the standard rom-com: The setting: an idyllic small town in United States where everyone, no matter what their occupation, has thousands and thousands of dollars to spend on Christmas decorations. The Plot: either boy meets girl or two high school sweethearts reconnect; boy and girl dance around a relationship (Think "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid;); 20 minutes before the end of the movie, boy and girl face a conflict; 20 seconds before the credits roll, boy and girl kiss as snowflakes gently fall on their perfect locks as Christmas music plays softly in the background. Perfect people. Perfect families. Perfect smiles. Why face the reality of a real family when you can kvell for a perfect one?

• And speaking about Christmas music, I only learned recently many of the most popular holiday tunes were written by Jews. The most famous is "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin [born Israel Beilin]. Here is just a sampling of my other favorites: "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" by Mel Torme [born Melvin Howard Torme]; "The Christmas Waltz" by Sammy Kahn [born Cohen] and Jule Styne; "Santa Baby" by Joan Javits and Phil Springer; "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent [born Kaufman]; "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by George Wyle [born Bernard Weissman] and Eddie Pola [born Sidney Edward Pollacsek]. Even "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" got his shiny nose from two Jews from New York City's suburbs. Johnny Marks, who also went on to write "Rocking Round the Christmas Tree" and Burl Ives' classic "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas," never actually celebrated the holiday. Marks' co-writer Robert Louis May allegedly shared with multiple sources that the lyrics actually represented the ostracism May felt growing up as a Jew with a large nose. Hey, what better way for Jews to live vicariously through Christmas by realizing those songs you are hearing everywhere were written by members of the tribe!

So, as Larry and I walk through the neighborhood during this surprisingly cold December in Florida, I will rejoice in the lights and sounds and the smells of Christmas emanating from my Christian friends' homes. Then we will go home, light our Chanukiah and enjoy some hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies as the candles flicker and burn, content in knowing that, for the Shapiros, that is enough.