Seriously, stop calling Chanukah a minor holiday. Look, I get it, American Christians and Christian-background atheists think Chanukah is our Big Holiday like Christmas, because they hype it up to try to avoid accountability for Christian hegemony. I get that.
And I get that it’s not one our most important holidays. Those would be Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach (Passover), Sukkot, and Shavuot. Chanukah comes in at number 6 or 7 at best. I get wanting to correct Christians about this because they think it’s our number one holiday and it isn’t. I get it.
That doesn’t make it a “minor” holiday. Tu b’Av is a minor holiday. 17 Tammuz is a minor fast day. Just because Chanukah isn’t in the most important five doesn’t make it minor — we have lots of holidays that are important.
Chanukah is a joyful and wonderful holiday that brings light in the darkest time of year. It has fun, accessible, and sensory rituals, and delicious foods. It tells the story of our triumph over forces of suppression and assimilation. It tells the story of our fight to retain our identity as the Jewish people, and celebrates our success in that. It’s a statement of defiance against every antisemite or regime or Nazi who wants to try to kill us. There are stories of people making menorahs out of potatoes in order to secretly light them in concentration camps. It’s a holiday of defiance and pride in our peoplehood and our continued survival.
And it’s also fun. We get to play with fire, watch wax dripping beautifully down the menorah, make latkes with our families, play dreidel, eat chocolate. I have so many wonderful memories of making latkes with my dad and learning how to hand-grate the potatoes while my dad fried the first batches. I remember him teaching me how to fry them when I was a little older — how to flip them, and how the second batch is always better because the oil got flavored. I remember my mom lighting her really cool flame-shaped menorah, and my dad lighting his little one all in a line, and me lighting all the ones I’d made in preschool, covered in glitter and tissue paper and glue. I remember painstakingly choosing the perfect candle color scheme each night.
I remember the time when I was 18 sitting with my friends watching the candles burn and they lit a ball of tin foil on fire, as 18-year-olds do. I remember last year, my partner singing the word “latke” to the tune of Gregorian chants while mixing latke batter. A few years ago, when I went to a Moishe House event to learn about Chanukah foods from other places, like Moroccan sfenj (doughnuts) and Iraqi mshabbak (like funnel cakes) and Kavkazi kurze (dumplings). The year I made a menorah out of a bike chain for my dad who loves cycling. The year I was in Israel and brought sufganiot (jelly doughnuts) to a retirement home. The year I made tiny little latkes to pose my American Girl dolls with. The past four years, when I and so many others have spread the light by posting pictures of our lit menorahs for @istodayajewishholiday’s Chanukah Project.
I love making latkes. I love sitting in darkness illuminated only by the candles and watching the unique paths the wax takes down to the tin foil below the menorah. I love watching the tiny flames still clinging to life and then going out in a puff of smoke. I love seeing all the amazing creative and cool menorahs that everyone has, even if my Jerusalem skyline menorah is my favorite.
It’s true, it’s not the same type of holiday as Rosh Hashanah or Sukkot, where we’re commanded to have big holiday meals and refrain from work. People go to school on Chanukah. The days are pretty normal. But that doesn’t make it unimportant or minor, it’s just different.
And not only that, Chanukah is probably the most widely celebrated Jewish holiday. Many Jews only celebrate 3 or 4 holidays and Chanukah is one of them. Many Jews only celebrate Chanukah and Pesach. Many Jews only celebrate Chanukah. To them, it absolutely is super important. Maybe religiously it’s less so, but culturally, in America, Chanukah is very important. And cultural understanding are every bit as relevant as religious ones.
Again, I get the desire to push back on the way Christian hegemony reframes our calendar. The way it centers the wrong things, in the wrong places. The way American Christian society ignores our actual very important holidays to the detriment of our employment and education and social lives. Listen, as someone with adhd who went through years of public school with my first quarter grades always noticeably lower because of the days I missed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and my inability to catch back up, I fully agree. I wish Christian society could see us and our calendar in any other context than a last minute shoe-in attempt to “diversify” their own holiday.
But none of that is Chanukah’s fault. We don’t need to put down or diminish it. It’s a fun and beautiful holiday, and especially in times like these, we need all the light we can get.
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