Something you may have already noticed from reading my blog is the mix of holidays we celebrate at our house. We are a two-faith marriage and therefore celebrate and honor holidays on both sides! This week was Hanukkah, which changes date every year, and we’ve been celebrating in our way that’s become our own little kind of tradition! Hanukkah is hardly the most important of the Jewish holidays, but any holiday with family, food and presents is always fun to celebrate!
On the first night of Hanukkah we start lighting the candles. We also usually have our special Hanukkah dinner this night, which includes brisket, latkes, applesauce and either fried apples or donuts. You’re supposed to eat foods fried in oil during Hanukkah because of the oil that stayed lit for the 8 nights when it was only enough for one night.
My homemade latkes! They weren’t perfect, but they did taste good. I don’t think I squeezed the water from the potatoes enough, so they were a little soggy and not as crisp as I would have liked. Oh, well, better luck next time!
Carter loves to “cheese” for the camera at any given moment. Our menorah is from my husbands parents and was the same one they used when he was a boy! We do the candles every night, but we don’t do a special dinner every night.
After dinner Carter gets to open presents, one for each night of Hanukkah. I tell you what, this kid really rakes in the gifts between Hanukkah and Christmas! This year we decided not to get him extra presents since it’s just so many, so he is getting presents every night from Nana and Papa. He gets a little gift each night, and then a bigger one of the last night, usually.
Another tradition is to play dreidel. We really haven’t done this very much because Carter wasn’t old enough, but we thought we’d give it a try this year. He actually had a hard time getting the dreidels to spin correctly and ended up just kind of throwing it most of the time!
Dreidel is basically a gambling game using coins (gelt) or anything else (candy pieces, raisins, pretzels, whatever) to bet. For kids you can use chocolate coins, of course! Each side of the dreidel has a different letter from the Hebrew and depending on which side you land on you do different things. For “nun” you do nothing, “gimmel” means take everything in the pot, land on “Hey” and you get half the pot and if you land on “Shin” you have to put another coin (or whatever you’re using) in the pot!
Happy Hanukkah!
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