Hanukkah

Sometimes I wonder if we are doing the right thing...trying to be multi-cultural. Celebrating all different holidays from all different cultures to try to make our kids and ourselves more well rounded.

I think we are just confusing the heck out of Brother.

Maybe when you are six, you just need to be able to package yourself in a little box. This going outside of the box, flinging the norm to the side of the road, is just too hard when you are in the first grade. Maybe.

We are celebrating Hanukkah this year. It is a very milquetoast celebration. We all receive a small gift on each of the eight nights. We eat foods fried in oil, as is tradition, like latkes and doughnuts. Last night I made the Applesauce Noodle Kugel recipe posted on Maybe Painted Pink. It was a lot like a bread pudding and pretty good. We have a menorah and light the allotted amount of candles for each night. It is nice. A nice celebration. I tell Brother that Hanukkah, like Christmas, is about being with family. And also, Hanukkah is remembering that sometimes good things happen when we least expect it. (This is my take on the whole Hanukkah story.) We watch the flickering candles and maybe listen to a traditional prayer on the computer. I think about how tradition is a lovely thing, and how I am honored to remember the Jewish race that has been persecuted throughout its history. It helps us talk about how people are different, but still all people. How each and every person deserves respect simply because they are a person.

But then, Brother says that the little girl next door told him that people who celebrate Hanukkah don't believe in god. Her father is a pastor of a church. So, I have to tell Brother how that is completely untrue and most people who celebrate Hanukkah are Jewish and believe in the exact same god as Christians (and Muslims) do, the debate is more or less about which son, if any, inherited the family goods. I also tell him that we aren't Christians, but we celebrate Christmas, so even though we aren't Jewish, we can celebrate Hanukkah. It is about honoring and respecting other cultures and beliefs. But maybe I am overloading him. It would be so much easier for me to tell him the pat answers that so many folks have to these hard questions. The pat answers that I think are probably not exactly correct.

I wonder if he will thank me when he is older for giving him this ambassadorial outlook on life. The outlook where we try our best to recognize and honor the differences and positives about all the different kinds of folks that make up this world we live in. Maybe, if more people were like that, maybe I might tell people what "church" I go to when they ask, instead of hiding out of fear of being ostracized or of burning crosses in my front yard.

Or maybe I will get this: "Why can't you be like other parents?"

I don't know.