More on Chanukah

[redbird]

It was kind of Heather to invite me to her Chanukah party, and the latkes were fine, but celebrating Chanukah feels weird now.

In my family, it was a two-part celebration: we had the menorah, maybe a few games of dreidel, gifts when we were small, and Chanukah gelt on any scale (varying over time) from a few chocolate coins to ridiculously generous checks from my grandparents. And it was my grandfather's birthday. I don't know exactly when Salomon Kanner was born, except that it was close enough to Chanukah that it made sense to celebrate then. Usually his daughters--that's my mother and aunts--bought him gifts, including clothing. I think he just didn't like to shop, which makes sense to me, so this meant he had new shirts, sweaters, and such. Or maybe it's that he'd reached the point where anything he wanted and that any of us could plausibly afford, he already had, so the only things it made sense to buy were replacements for what got used up or worn out.

My grandfather died at the age of 97, in 1996, so it's been a few years since we had what I think of as a proper Chanukah gathering. I'm not at all an observant Jew, and the part of the holiday symbolism that made sense to me was lights at the dark point of the year, not the associated historical story. But mostly it was a combination of seeing the family--we were all in the New York area then--and Grandpa's birthday.

Comments

[camfangrrl.livejournal.com]

Your grandfather was born December 11, 1898, at least according to Social Security records.

http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi?lastname=kanner&firstname=salomon&nt=exact

[redbird]

That sounds right. (I could, of course, have asked my mother (though not at this hour) or my aunt.)