14 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {sloane citron} light of the candles. It was wondrous to watch my children open their gifts each night, the quiet light illuminating their efforts to unwrap them. A book didn’t get the same response as a new baseball glove, but the kids were always grateful and happy. After the gifts were opened and the wrapping paper lay strewn across our kitchen floor, we would have a delicious family dinner with latkes, applesauce and sour cream. After the meal, the kids would play dreidel with golden foil-covered chocolate coins. Today, life is different. My children now have children of their own, blossoming into a group of 14, with more little ones expected to join our tribe in 2025. And, of course, these grown-up kids have their own homes and are eager to celebrate Hanukkah there, diligently teaching their children the prayers and songs we taught them. There is no way to get them all eight gifts each, since that would be 112 presents. I think I’d need to hire an assistant for that chore. Instead, I do my best to find one gift for each of them. We all get together in our family home for at least one of the nights, and it is a true joy to see the new additions singing the prayers and songs with a gusto that I certainly didn’t have at that age. And, with the lights out and the room dark, there’s happiness in my heart as I watch them, just as I had watched their parents, open their gifts against the dim light of the briskly burning candles. Happy Christmas and Hanukkah to you and your family. Growing up in Amarillo, Texas, my family’s Hanukkah celebrations were subdued and uneventful. We would light the candles without much fanfare, and I was given one gift from my grandmother and one from my parents. Usually, my grandmother gave me something of substance, like a bicycle or a musical instrument. She was always good for something up to $75, which would be a large number in today’s money. She was a generous woman, not just with her family but with everyone, and I learned from her. When I had my own family of four children, I felt compelled to give them the full treatment. There are several prayers and songs that accompany the lighting of the eight candles (one candle the first night leading to eight on the last night), so doing the liturgy and songs every night is the best way for children to learn them. Besides the poetic experience of lighting the candles, I felt compelled to provide plenty of materialistic things for my children. In what would seem an effort to make up for the muted holidays of my youth, I decided to shower my kids with delight. So, I took on the responsibility of finding eight presents for each child, a total of 32 gifts. On the face of it, this seems like a ridiculous idea. But I was committed and so I set about doing the best job that I possibly could—these were my kids after all. The first step was to get each of them things I knew that they wanted, from a telescope to a party dress to flying lessons. Each child was unique with very different interests and desires. Finding four such presents made a good start. But that hardly covered the goal of getting them each eight gifts. I would wander the aisles of Target and the stores at Stanford Shopping Center looking for presents I thought they might like. I would usually find a few choice things this way, narrowing down the number left to find. Some of the gifts were truly small gestures, though not quite as bad as giving them an orange, like in days past. I would go to local bookstores and buy up a dozen books, maybe head over to Big 5 for some baseballs or hats or sunglasses. Eventually, the job got done. Each night of Hanukkah we would summon all the kids (and often their friends) into our kitchen. We would gather around the large island where we had placed all of our Hanukkiahs (eight-branched menorahs), a collection that continually grew as we found new ones that we liked. We would place tin foil below each of them to keep the wax from spilling all over the granite surface. Then we would turn off all the lights and, in the darkness, we would find the magic of the holiday. As the prayers and songs were recited, we slowly lit the candle the first night, adding one more each night. By the fourth day, the Hanukkiahs shone brightly, and the room was filled with the flickering brightly burning
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