My mother loved Hanukkah more than anyone I knew. This, despite growing up Episcopalian and knowing next to nothing about Judaism until she met my father. She couldn’t tell a mitzvah from a Maccabee, but she would have added eight more nights of Hanukkah if she could have.
She collected menorahs, beginning with the modest, brass one my father owned, somehow swiped after their separation. Then, my sister and I both got our own menorahs. Rosie’s was porcelain with dancing animals, mine was made of K’Nex. Each Hanukkah, a new menorah would appear, and my mother would insist on bringing all of them out at once, filling the kitchen with candlelight for hours until bedtime.
“It really was a miracle,” she would say in a breathy tone.
Because of our parents’ custody agreement, we never spent all eight nights in one house. In the best of years, we’d be with my mom for two nights, then skip one or two or three nights, and then finish out Hanukkah at hers again. This could have meant fewer presents, but she assured us that however many nights we skipped, we would receive back payment. Starting around Thanksgiving, the living room shelves started filling with boxes wrapped in blue paper, various sizes and labeled in my mother’s distinctive cursive, “Night 1 - Sam,” “Night 2 - Rosie,” and so on. The labels were just suggestions. We could select other nights’ gifts if we really wanted, and when my sister invited friends over for Hanukkah, they would also receive gifts, labeled with their names and thoughtfully chosen as if they had asked for it themselves.
This is how you win a culture war. As I’m sure my mother was aware our father’s one-night rule, my mother enjoyed nothing more than showering us with gifts she couldn’t afford: a Sega Genesis, The Simpsons Edition of Clue, Mighty Max playsets. She knew that a quality gift got people talking.
“Did you here Bernie’s kids are living without a Sega Genesis?” people would say. “Those poor, helpless babies. Thank God they have a mother who loves them.”
Fine for my mother, but being talked about was my worst fear, as the only kid I knew with divorced parents, and the only one who celebrated Hanukkah. In kindergarten, my sister told her whole class that Santa didn’t exist, which led to crying, a number of angry phone calls, and a school assembly. I wasn’t interested in that kind of attention.
It was no surprise that Thomson Elementary would program most of is December lessons around Christmas themes. We sang “Up on a Rooftop” in clashing harmony during music and returned to our classroom to spend the afternoon building gingerbread houses decorated with green and red gumdrops.
When Christmastime arrived at Thomson Elementary, I fell in with tradition, singing “Up on a Rooftop” in clashing harmony during music and returning to my desk to construct a gingerbread house, which I knew was really made of graham crackers. Our teacher read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas aloud and I never complained. Unless you come with either money or looks, the only way to win social status is by not sticking out.
The week before winter break, teachers are always looking for ways to kill time, and we were told that today our class would play host a very special visitor. In later years, we would come to recognize the phrase “very special visitor” as a lead-in for any number of unbearable children’s entertainers: Disney-themed brass band, puppeteers with shrill voices, a local children’s author who wrote stories about her Pomeranian. The kinds of adults that got slimed on Nickelodeon.
I still recall the sharp, stinging pains in my stomach that emerged as my mother walked through the door, wearing a chef’s hat, menorah earrings, and a blue striped apron. Under her arm she carried a Cuisinart, and her hands held two grocery bags bursting with potatoes.
She smiled and asked my teacher where she could set up. The stomach pains continued as I realized that she was our special visitor.
On the surface, my mother’s intention was to provide cultural enrichment to my Christ-loving classmates. As a Christian herself, she knew that the key to any culture was its food. On two desks joined together, she balanced her Cuisinart, a plate of potatoes, and a hot plate with heated oil. Her vision was to process enough potatoes for fifteen children and intermittently explain the story of Hanukkah.
Except she didn’t really know the story of Hanukkah.
“Sam, why don’t you explain the story of Hanukkah?” she said. I would try, but it was hard to be heard between pulses of the food processor.
“The Maccabees were a tribe ...”
PULSE!
“But the Greeks burned down the second temple ...”
PULSE!
“Skip ahead to the miracle,” my mother said.
“I was getting to that,” I asserted, but she didn’t hear me over the long pulse of a knotty potato. She stopped the Cuisinart long enough to say, “Does anyone have any questions?”
This was a terrible mistake.
“Why didn’t they use candles?” asked a girl I had a crush on.
“Aren’t temples made of stones?” asked the bully.
“I’m Greek,” said one curly haired girl in the front row whose uncle ran a pizza store. “I don’t think we ever did anything like that.”
I was being eaten alive, and the questions kept coming, even after the latkes were served. “Why don’t you just call this a hashbrown?” said someone whose face I’ve blocked from memory. “Do you live at McDonalds?”
I saw no earthly reason to love my mother after doing this to me, and it puzzled me why she had surprised me this way. She had it down to every detail: the chef’s hat, the earrings, the five minutes of stage time delivered to me. It all seemed so perfectly designed to further expel me from the social order of first grade. With the benefit of time, I’ve come to understand this act-out as part of a Mrs. Doubtfire-like scheme to win extra time with her kids. The custody agreement was grey during school time, and the one advantage she had over my father was that she worked from home.
That night was my father’s night. When he came home from work, I tried to avoid any questioning, but he smelled the canola oil. “She did what?” he said when I told him the story. He walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. He hung it up after a few rings and stormed upstairs muttering to himself.
This is part 3 in my untitled Hanukkah series. Catch up on the previous emails:
Culture boy does it again😁