All Of The Lights, All Of The Lights

By this point in the year, I am usually sick of Christmas commercials and Christmas lights.   The only Christmas lights I ever really appreciated were the tastefully hung yellow lights that were draped through the branches of the tree in the front yard of my old babysitters and neighbors, Mrs. Morris and her daughters.  I suppose I liked these lights for the same reason I liked the yellow lights in Manyunk—because they felt like home.  But by the middle of December, any other Christmas lights were excessive and tacky.  And Christmas songs on the radio (many of which were actually composed by Jews) were inconsiderate and annoying.  The random smattering of Hanukkah dreidels and menorahs were a nice attempt at inclusivity, but it was just not enough. 

It got better once Andy and I moved to New York, because we lived in a neighborhood with a lot of Jews, never listened to the radio, and rarely watched TV.  But I didn’t even realize how much more pleasant it is to live in Israel during the Christmas season until Andy and I heard our first Christmas ad on the radio sometime during the first week of December.  We’re not completely immune to Christmas ads (we do see some during the shows we watch on hulu), but this one was in Hebrew and advertised a Christmas bazaar that is “the most Christmas in the world”.  (The Hebrew is a little funnier but the translation is pretty accurate).  It was at that point that I realized I hadn’t seen Christmas lights or heard Christmas advertisements at all.

There are many cities in Israel that are holy to Christians (Jerusalem, Bethelem, Nazareth) and I wonder if things will change as we get closer to Christmas.  As I tend to do in my blog posts, I’m going to conjure a guess as to why I haven’t noticed so much hype about the Christmas season, and I think there’s more to it than just the minority of the population of Israel being Christian.  I also think that holidays in Israel are less commercialized than they are in the States.  Andy and I didn’t really see any “Hanukkah sale” signs on stores either—most of the sale signs were either there already or were taken down after the High Holiday season in September.  In a place with so much religious history, it’s easy to ignore the commercialization of holidays in the rest of the world and to focus on the religious significance and historical basis of the holiday, and on what really matters—family.  When Jews say “a great miracle happened here” (“here” meaning Israel.  Jewish outside of Israel say “a great miracle happened there”), they aren’t referring to getting the last dvd player on Black Friday, and many aren’t even referring to the Hanukkah story of oil lasting for 8 days when it was only supposed to last for one day—instead, they are talking about the miracle of the Jewish people still existing despite all of the nations we have had to face along the way.

During Hanukkah, I had what I thought was great idea; to walk through the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to look at all of the lights from the menorahs.  I had seen that all of the families in my neighborhood light their menorahs outside (traditionally, in the States, we put the menorahs in the window in order to publicize the miracle of Hanukkah) and I figured that the Old City would have plenty of menorahs to look at.  The streets of the Old City were overcrowded with tours, families, and even groups of soldiers who had the same idea I did.  As it turns out, walking around the Old City during Hanukkah is quite the popular activity, and even though Hanukkah ranks on the low end of holiness in the repertoire of Jewish holidays, everyone seemed to agree with Andy and me that it was a good night to visit the Kotel (Western Wall) as well. 

Even though, after a while, all of the menorahs started to look the same, there was something really special about being in a place where people could publicize their religion, and were not in the minority while doing so.  Some of the houses had set-ups that involved upwards of 10 menorahs, each with their lights shining brightly against the dark of night.  I felt comfortable and proud to be part of such a tradition, and even in awe of families who have been observing this tradition for thousands of years (as my family has).  I’ve always talked about how I like the feeling of “being part of something bigger” which is one of the reasons why I love being part of the Jewish people, and I couldn’t help feeling this way on the night Andy and I went to the Old City to look at Hanukkah lights. 

Even the stores we walked by had menorahs—and not the fake paper kind that are put up just to make the Jewish customers happy.  Stores had menorahs which they light each night because the store owners are Jewish and that’s what Jews do on Hanukkah.  Andy and I walked home underneath the glowing menorah decorations lining the streets which we had seen being put up a week earlier.