HEY JEWS

Is that like putting candles in paper bags?

Sounds like an American Catholic thing, primarily Hispanic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminaria

Candles in paper bags is pretty universal, just saying

It's convoluted. By the same token snickerdoodles might be considered Christian, because they get made for Christmas.

If candles in paper bags were pretty universal I would have seen them over the past few decades any time other than just Christmastime. Now flaming brown bags with poop left on the front porch? That's universal.

We eat snickerdoodles all the time, so dunno. But egg not? More controversial.

I had a gingerbread cookie my kids teacher made and it was good but I was thinking about how it tastes about equally foreign to me as Indian sweets.

lol egg not. "Egg nog? More like egg *not*!"

Tonight we googled to see if there were other kinds of nog, and the answer is apparently ... not.

flaming dogshit in paper bags is pretty universal

I recall seeing streets with luminaries growing up in SE Pennsylvania, just as I have throughout my couple of decades here, so it's definitely more than a southwest thing, or a Latino thing. The catch is that neighborhoods often agree to it together, so that the whole street is lined, which means if you say no then you're the stinker. And yeah, they are pretty (which makes rejecting them even more obnoxious), and yeah, there have been lots of different reasons to put candles in bags on the sidewalk/street to light the way, historically/traditionally (with the southwest being one place that has a few reasons). But the notion that they're there to celebrate the winter solstice and not to light the way to for baby Jesus ... come on. It's always Christians that think their traditions are totally secular and have nothing to do with Christmas. Per one site:

Luminarias are used in many communities across the United States and in other countries. Each community has their own emphasis on why they carry out the tradition. Not all are for Christmas either. Some are to light the way to church. Some light the way for the Christ child. Some light the way for Pa Pa Noel, or Santa Claus.

So yeah, it's not always about Christmas, sometimes it's just about church, or Jesus, or Santa. You know, lots of reasons.

Anyway, it's extra odd that the neighbors (who are all great, don't get me wrong) are apparently dong this tonight ... which is neither the winter solstice (Monday) nor Christmas (Thursday).

It's always Christians that think their traditions are totally secular and have nothing to do with Christmas.

I said it's convoluted because Christmas is massively loaded down with traditions which occupy the gray area between secular and sacred, mainly because it long ago got mashed up with solstice-related festivities and a general desire to party down when it's dark, cold, and you're stuck inside.

There are hardcore carols like 'O, Holy Night' or 'Come, All Ye Faithful' that hard sell Christian beliefs. But you could also consider Jingle Bells to be 'Christian', because it is strongly attached to the Christmas holiday by tradition, in spite of the fact that it doesn't mention God, Jesus, prayer, church or the Christmas holiday at all, though it does mention some woman named Fanny Bride. Christian, or not? I'd rate it as slightly less religious than the dreidel song.

Ironically, Jingle Bells is one of the few now Christmas songs *not* written for Christmas! In fact, some theorize it may have officially been one of the rare Thanksgiving songs ... before The Man got a hold of it and converted it to a Christmas song.

Regardless, I pretty much consider anything done exclusively around the Christmas holiday for the Christmas holiday to be innately Christian, relatively innocuous or not.

Yeah “secular Christmas” is still a manifestation of Christian hegemony.

But Christian hegemony happens all year around.

Yes, it does.

Hey Jews! I am making latkes tonight.

Happy 10th night of Chanukah.

It is a miracle, there is still oil for frying latkes on the 10th day

I happened to put a tree for Pagan Winter Solstice. Planning on cooking some matzoh ball soup too

My wife is Jewish and I’m a devout atheist with a fondness for Christmas stuff. We did the xmas thing together and when we had kids we started doing Hanukkah as wife started to get back into the faith. Now we’re stuck doing both holidays with my birthday, my wife’s and my dad’s birthdays all n December. It is TOO MUCH and I regret not getting off the Christmas train when I had the chance. UGH.

Just a note that it is not "Miss Fanny Bride" in Jingle Bells, but "Miss Fanny Bright." Which makes it a little more naughty seeming.

The luminaries looked lovely last night, btw. I didn't realize it wasn't just our block but I guess 150+ blocks around here that banded together to do it. It was nice strolling around, looking at the solstice lights, listening to the solstice carols, checking out all the solstice decorations, lit-up solstice trees in the windows ...

My solstice latkes were delicious

We cleaned the wax off and put away our solstice menorahs last night.

it is not "Miss Fanny Bride" in Jingle Bells, but "Miss Fanny Bright."

this version rhymes "bright" with "side", which is just a shitty rhyme. which prompts the question, what was wrong with those people?

Drunk.

Today I learned, just now, from wikipedia:

Music historian James Fuld notes that "the word jingle in the title and opening phrase is apparently an imperative verb." In the winter in New England in pre-automobile days, it was common to adorn horses' harnesses with straps bearing bells as a way to avoid collisions at blind intersections, since a horse-drawn sleigh in snow makes almost no noise.

So it was more like, Jingle, bells, jingle! Jingle all the way!!"

Got take out dim sum last night (where the restaurant wished me a merry Christmas), the kids built these gingerbread house kits we bought from a local bakery (they've never built them before; one got so frustrated at her broken house that she literally resorted to a hot glue gun, the other's was so top heavy it collapsed on itself), prepared breakfast for 30 for a homeless shelter, watched Wonder Woman stink it up, listened to a half-assed lecture about Jews on Christmas (which offered so many reasons for the Chinese restaurant tradition but somehow missed *because they're open*), picked through cookies and other stuff gifted from all the neighbors. A fine not-Christmas was had by all.

The night before we went to a friend's backyard for a modified Feast of the Seven Fishes thing. It was 17 degrees The oysters and shrimp cocktails literally froze, but I got to put to good use one of my hanukah presents, a heated vest with a light that pulses and glows like a tiny little Iron Man generator.

I didn't realize that the member of the New York Dolls band who just died from cancer, Syl Sylvain (not his full birth name) was an Egyptian Jew who ended up in the US with his family. I think they left Egypt when it started to be a little uncomfortable there for Jews shortly after the formation of the country of Israel in 1948

Hey Jews who observe the not-quite-minor-but-still-not-totally-mainstream-holidays. Happy Purim!

Topical elements of our synagogue's Purim Shpiel last night (all on Zoom):

- Vashti refused to show up in-person and maskless for the king's party, choosing instead to participate remotely via Zoom, prompting him to find a new queen
- Vashti + Fauci = Faucti, played by congregant & chief infectious disease specialist at local hospital
- Q Haman

Forced and awkward puns and lots of corniness, as is the tradition, but got a few chuckles out of me

Our temple did a cool cross cultural exchange:

"Beyond the Hamantaschen - The Scroll of Esther begins with an account of Ahasuerus’s kingdom and tells us his kingdom stretched mei Hodu ad Kush, from India to Ethiopia. So… for Purim this year we are offering take-out food delivered to the parking lot from Mantra by Indian Garden and Addis Café."

wow, nice! 2 of my favorite cuisines. and this is definitely one of the holidays that could use some gastronomic updating. will push for similar here next year (though i live in a total, um, food desert for Ethiopian)

AITA: My husband (35m) made a huge party with his friends and got super drunk and asked me (32f) to come by wearing just a crown and I said I don’t want to go. His evil advisor (49m) is suggesting he kill me but like idk his party seemed stupid. AITA?

— Dr. Hannah Lebovits (@HannahLebovits) February 21, 2021

Q Haman is great

My housemates and I finally got around to making hamantaschen yesterday. We really upped our game this year; one housemate made the poppyseed filling herself instead of buying it in a can, we had some savory ones with caramelized onions, and I wanted a really sour filling for some of them so I cooked down sour cherries with sugar and thickened them with flour, so that basically they were little sour cherry hand pies.

nice! sour cherry sound fantastic. in my house we're making them with an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old so it's strawberry and apricot jelly right out of the jar at the moment lol. I look forward to branching into more refined tastes in coming years!

They were really good, I was very happy with them. We did some apricot jelly out of the jar as well, for tradition's sake. And some fig jam and goat cheese, which I haven't tried yet but have high hopes for.

all those hamentaschen sound incredible lily

My sister (in England) really wanted to make them with prune and poppy seed fillings, but says she has never seen either for sale there. I guess it never occurred to her to ... make it.

L'shana Tovah! Zoomed a service today; and then had dinner with Mom , my son and his gf. Was a little different without my Dad who passed away last November. My wife and I did the cooking.

Services were nice today, a nice return. I did have a chilling thought, though, when I looked around the maybe half-full sanctuary (many were at home, streaming, no doubt wary of return) and thought, imagine if all those missing people had been taken by the pandemic? I feel very fortunate that so many were absent by choice.

Virtual services for us. Kids service in the morning with our 6 & 11 year daughters. Grown folks service was a little later and we made the older kid sit through it. At times she was twitchy and desperately looking for a distraction but occasionally I could see the words were hitting her hard. She was teary-eyed when the rabbi spoke of the hardships of the past year. It meant a lot that something said during a service registered with her.

Our synagogue is, uh, blessed to have a lot of outdoor space and set up a huge tent on a grassy field and did in-person outdoors. Masks required, vax and reservation required for first day of the holiday but honor system the second day b/c no reservations. It was really nice. Humorously, the COVID Task Force implemented a "no shmoozing" rule to avoid close contact - you could socialize once you were out of the physical vicinity of the service but they didn't want people congregating. There was absolutely beautiful weather here in western Mass, which really made the experience.

fwiw, ours had masks required, and while I assume most if not all were vaxxed, there was not a vaccine requirement. The sanctuary was divided in half, more or less, with the front half marked as not/less socially distanced and the back half spread out and more explicitly socially distanced, but because it was nowhere near capacity those is the front could spread out and/or pod up with friends if they wanted. The kids and their services were all outside. The rabbis acknowledged that everyone has their own degree of comfort, and that no one should put themselves in a position that made them feel unsafe, but I think everyone was OK with how things went.

Outdoor under a tent, masked, really nice to do it not on the screen and I'm not even that religious

Great service today, felt weirdly special. We had temple member Tavi Gevinson's mom (who is a Norwegian convert who moonlights as a Hebrew tutor) chant the Haftorah, we had temple member blues singer Joanna Connor perform (contextualized by a great sermon about how it's sometimes OK to feel bad), we got the great news that since the pandemic broke out there has not been a single outbreak among the kids in the preschool, and that after planning for the financial worst the temple not only didn't have to cut its budget but actually received *more* donations. And then to top it all off we had the junior rabbi forget to turn his wireless mic off when he went to lead the kids service outside so, just like in "The Naked Gun," we heard his disembodied upbeat voice reverberating through the hall. The main rabbi even joked we were lucky he didn't use the bathroom.

From a Smithsonian Folklife article “The modern potato latke was not inevitable “

While the incorporation of the potato in European diets introduced Jewish home cooks to a new potential ingredient for their latkes, the invention of Crisco in 1911 spurred further cooking options. In Eastern Europe, latkes were historically fried in schmaltz, rendered poultry fat. Observant Jews following the laws of kashrut do not eat meat and dairy products in the same meal, so latkes cooked in schmaltz could only be eaten alongside meat or non-dairy dishes. Crisco is made from vegetable oils and seeds, and thus is parve (neither meat nor dairy). Thanks to this technological change, Jewish cooks had the option of frying and eating latkes in a new way

https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/foodways-holidays-hanukkah-latkes?fbclid=IwAR0qg6QMc25A1tJEBcMmaWMsH7lqwuNVWYNYjFqSnkouV2mwlH7Zf2YDdI0

I am now thinking about how delicious a schmaltz-fried latke must be

Yesterday my daughter told me a teacher of hers wished her and another Jewish student a "Happy Seventh Night!" My daughter told the teacher it wasn't the seventh night, it was the third. The teacher furrowed her brow, said oh, then asked, well, doesn't Hanukkah last seven nights? And my daughter said ... no.

Another Jewish student in a different class was asked by a classmate if she was from Israel. The girl said no. The other kid then followed up with "but aren't you Jewish?" And the first said yeah. And the other kid asked "but how could you be Jewish if you're not from Israel?" (This is 9th grade, btw, not 1st grade). The first girl said you don't have to be from Israel to be Jewish, her family was mostly from Poland, and the second kid, shocked, said "Poland? But Poland isn't a Jewish country!"

Then there was an online discussion my kid saw, so buyer beware, but the gist was someone was convinced Hanukkah had something to do with Hitler, and a person righteously corrected them and explained that, no, Hanukkah had nothing to do with Hitler. Hanukkah was about something that happened thousands of years ago, whereas Hitler had to do with the Holocaust ... "in the '90s."

Last was my same daughter's objection to people that say "Happy Hanukkah, to all that celebrate." And she was super annoyed, because no one ever says "Merry Christmas, to all that celebrate." It's always for non-Christian holidays, and it comes off sooooo patronizing.

Anyway. Happy Hanukkah.