Festival of Lights

Hanukah is traditionally known as the “Festival of Lights”. We light our menorah every night for 8 nights, adding one new candle until the big bon fire finale on the last night. My kids, Monkey Boy and Peanut, alternate nights deciding what color candles to put in the menorah. Monkey Boy likes to alternate colors – red, blue, green, white – occasionally really mixing our holidays by using alternating red and green candles. Peanut prefers to pick all the same color on her nights – usually yellows and pinks until “her colors” run out.

It occurred to me last night while driving home from the train station that the name “Festival of Lights” probably more appropriately belongs to Christmas. Drive around the suburbs in December and you’ll see I’m right. Some neighborhoods are so festive they turn night into day. (Good thing we’re not having an energy crisis.)

Don’t get me wrong, I like the lights. Even the house on the corner with the weedy lawn looks festive dressed in glowing multicolors. Though I must admit I’m not a huge fan of the twinkling lights. They make my brain hurt. Some houses have so many patterns twinking in different directions, I’m half positive I’ll come down with Tourette’s Syndrome just watching them.

Yes, lights are as much a part of Christmas as they are Hanukah. I just don’t love putting lights on the tree. Weaving in and out the branches, the sap Crazy Gluing the light strands to your palms, making sure you’ve got equal light distribution top to bottom and left to right. It’s downright stressful. Fortunately, MLB recognized several years ago that I lack the Christmas light gene and has been pretty accommodating. She can do the whole tree in less than an hour with perfect light distribution. I still usually get the task of stringing lights along the post and rail fence that lines the front of our property, but at least that’s in a straight line and only requires the deft turn of a twisty tie every 2-3 feet.

At the moment the fence lights are strung but I can’t get the damn thing to light up. Hope I get a non-freezing day this weekend to go down the fence looking for bad bulbs. In either case, it looks like that darn Christmas light gene deficiency strikes again.

There’s something to be said for the low-tech beauty of eight candles in a menorah. Even I can light a match.


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