Gift #7: The truth about your favorite Hanukkah song
And you have no idea where I'm going with this!
Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song” is one of the most important moments in American Jewish history. It’s up there with getting Brandeis on the Supreme Court and the “Yada Yada” episode of “Seinfeld.” “The Chanukah Song” was the only Hanukkah-themed song ever to transcend television, radio, and film. It was downloaded on Napster. It has covers and remixes. Somewhere in the metaverse, someone is telling someone else to “smoke your marijuanukkah.”
I was almost 10 when I first heard “The Chanukah Song.” I was a shy little guy who did well in school but tried not to stick out. Other kids thought I was weird already, no need to add a protected class status to that. But like many Jews of my generation, the loneliness fell away the first time I heard “The Chanukah Song” on the radio.
So it’s important as a Jewish thing, but it’s not a Hanukkah song.
It’s just a list of Jews.
And it totally worked. As soon as I first heard it, I wanted to memorize it. One day, my father caught me by his boombox, waiting for it to come on the radio so I could record it onto blank tape. My father took the tape away as soon as he saw it was one of his song demos. But this gave him an idea. That year, he got me the only useful Hanukkah gift he’s ever given me: the cassette that contained the song.
My dad actually went to Sam Goody and bought me a new tape.
We put it in the player and in the first few seconds there was a swear. “That’s not gonna work,” my dad said, popping it out and whisking it away to some drawer upstairs. He promised to bring it back with the bad parts edited out, but he never did.
Still, that wasn’t going to stop my plan.
That year, we had a new music teacher from Texas who insisted upon directing my school’s first-ever Christmas pageant. By the time she cleared all of the administrative hoops, it had become more of a Christmas talent show.
With lack of Jewish representation at school, I knew that bringing the only Hanukkah act would make me a shoe-in. Sure enough, I was selected, based on mumbling the only few bars I had heard on the radio. The only lyrics I knew for sure were:
Put on your yarmulke
It’s time for Hanukkah
For the rest of it, well, I assumed the music would come pouring out of me.
On the day of the show, I went in front of my entire school and recited, a cappella, as much of “The Chanukah Song” as I could remember.
Important to note, this was only the first year it had been on the radio, so most people weren’t even familiar with it. I’m pretty sure I got through the basic premise of the song, the beginning part that goes:
When you’re the only kid in town
Without a Christmas tree
Here’s a list of people who are Jewish
Just like you and me
Which was a problem, because literally no one else in that crowded gymnasium was Jewish.
When you first get into comedy, it’s not always clear what makes people laugh. I was too young to understand most of Sandler’s references, but I was pretty sure people would laugh at the funny rhymes and the silly voices. But they all bombed. The new music teacher from Texas started looking impatient. I was desperate for a reaction.
In the moment, I remembered one lyric that reliably got a laugh from my dad when we heard it on the radio:
OJ Simpson ...
I paused, just like he does in the song.
... Not a Jew!
Everything that happened from this moment on is a blur. I remember the mic was taken from my hands and hearing a Texas drawl announce, “Show’s over, folks. Merry Christmas to ya!”
I don’t remember how I got off stage. My next memory is sitting in class as if nothing had happened.
I wasn’t reprimanded for this performance and no one ever spoke of it again.
Most of the people who have heard and liked the Chanukah Song are not Jewish. On the radio, “The Chanukah Song” brought a welcome variety, and even if it’s not about Hanukkah, it’s really about standing out in a crowd.
The miracle isn’t that the oil lasted 8 days. It’s that we survived being weird all this time.
This is part 7 in my untitled Hanukkah series. Catch up on the previous “gifts”:
Love it🤓