Home > FJN News & Features > Avi's Corner > Eight Crazy Nights

 

Eight Crazy Nights

Click here to recommend
this article to a friend
By Avi Frier - FJN Publisher

“Chanukah is the Festival of Lights.
Instead of one day of presents,
we get Eight Crazy Nights.”
                                -Adam Sandler

Comedian Adam Sandler wrote The Hanukkah Song as his personal response to growing up the only kid on his block without a Christmas tree. Sandler intended the song, which lists Jewish celebrities, to give kids a sense of Jewish pride.

Sponsored links

A sequel, an animated holiday movie, and almost a decade later, people are still singing The Hanukkah Song, and the radio stations are still rotating it through their holiday music repertoires.

Personally, I like the song. It’s funny, the tune is catchy, and I still laugh every time I hear Adam Sandler, in the midst of his musical Who’s Who of Jewish Celebrities, say, “OJ Simpson...not a Jew!”

But while The Hanukkah Song is good for a laugh, it often leaves me wondering: Is being Jewish really such a raw deal that we need to bribe our kids to tolerate it?

The truth is, I remember being the only Jewish kid on my block in Richmond, Virginia, and taking comfort in the knowledge that I could always play the Eight Days of Presents Card if the other kids would question/poke fun at/threaten violence because of my non-celebration of Christmas.

But the Eight Days of Presents Card came with a price. I grew up expecting eight days of presents. By golly, I grew up believing that as compensation for being born into a family not fortunate enough to have a colorfully blinking tree in our living room, my parents (and perhaps society as a whole) owed me eight days of presents. And we’re talkin good ones here. I needed Eight Crazy Nights of gifts I could be proud of at the inevitable “Whadja get last night?” conversation that would take place in school each Chanukah morning. I needed Eight Crazy Nights of gifts good enough to make me proud to be a Jew.

Prior to the commercialization of Christmas, there was no such thing as a Chanukah present. Kids got Chanukah Gelt--cold hard cash--but it didn’t come free. Chaukah Gelt was reward for a year of excellence in Torah study. It wasn’t something you were owed. It was something you earned.

But then one cold winter morning, someone woke up and said, “Oh no! Our Christian neighbors have a pile of gifts waiting for them when they wake up on December 25! How can we ever compete with that? How will we ever keep our children from denouncing their Yiddishkeit if we don’t take drastic action now?”

And drastic action we took. Eight Crazy Nights of drastic action.

My children are expecting eight nights of presents. They’d like to think it’s going to be Eight Crazy Nights of Knock-Your-Socks-Off, but Chanukahs past have taught them that it’ll probably be more along the lines of One Crazy Night followed by seven nights of much smaller gifts that may or may not include socks.

My kids have also figured out that no one owes them anything as compensation for the burden of Judaism. Certainly not an X-Box.

The past years of birthdays and Chanukahs in the Frier house have hopefully taught my kids to be thankful for everything they have. At the end of every birthday party and Chanukah holiday, my children pick one gift from their loot to give to another child who is not as fortunate as they are.

I hope this Tzedakah Education will teach my children to always think about what they can do for others, rather than what’s in it for them.

As we do our last minute shopping in the days ahead, let’s all think of ways to turn Eight Crazy Nights into Eight Special, Memorable Nights that our kids will appreciate and learn from for years to come.



Posted by Avi Frier - FJN Publisher on 12/16 at 01:00 AM • Hits: 1154



Reader Comments

Next entry: My Chanukah Wish List
Previous entry: My Sincerest Apologies...

<< Back to main