Why I Give Chanukkah Presents

For Michael, who hates presents.



It's not about the getting.  Don't get me wrong--I like that part just as much as the next girl.  The anticipation; the look in the giver's eyes: a little bit of joy, a little bit of fear; the feel of the wrapping paper between my fingers as I hunt for the best method of attack.  But at the end of it all, that's not the point.

It's not about the giving.  Searching for weeks for the perfect gift, crafting a plan to hide it from its eventual owner, the expectation of joy in my loved one's eyes, the fear of imperfection, the feel of the wrapping paper between my fingers as I swaddle the gift like a newborn baby in the dead of night.  We give for so many reasons: love, appreciation, habit, obligation.  But at the end of it all, that's not the point either.

Take a moment.  Look at the candles.  When I kindle the flames, I always turn out the lights.  Standing there in my kitchen, with the smell of matches and stale oil from latkes in the air, I light the candles for Chanukkah as my ancestors have done for centuries.  Their menorahs and candles were different, their hopes and dreams are not mine, their prayers and wonder are the same.  The menorah has become a token of conformity, of transforming a minor festival into a commercial to-do in order to seem less like outsiders, like ourselves.  But there in my kitchen, watching the candles, I open to the wisdom of the centuries.  Here in the dark, the overhead light off, the tiny lights before me casting a glow over the table where I ate my cereal as a little girl, and I understand the wonder.  This, this is the point.

The Chanukkah we celebrate commemorates a great feat, the triumph of a small band of warriors over a mighty empire.  But we do not stand in our kitchens beating wooden swords on tin shields to celebrate the might of Judah the Maccabee.  That is not the point.  In a world where thousands die every day from oppression and war, we do not celebrate battle.  Instead, we read our stories, and find the sacred.  At Chanukkah, our act of worship is to make the mudane holy.

The act we celebrate is the re-dedication of the Holy Temple, desecrated by the oppressors.  After the triumph in battle, the first task of the Maccabees was to re-consecrate sacred, to remake it as holy.  And in this moment of crisis, G-d gave us a gift.  In the darkness of battle and desecration, G-d gave what was most needed: the holy light.  This is the miracle.  And this is the point.

Chanukkah comes at the darkest time of the year for us.  The days turn cold, the sun sets early and rises late, and in the midst of the commercialization that surrounds us, we are reminded too often that we are outsiders.  The darkness of winter closes in and whispers in our ears that we are alone.  But Chanukkah insists otherwise.  Long ago, G-d gave our ancestors an incredible gift: light to last in the darkness.  When the darkness whould have swallowed us, somehow, there was light.

That is the miracle of the candles: pinpoints of light in the darkness, G-d's gift to us, making sense when nothing else does.  The flicker of the candles in my darkened kitchen enfolds me, lifts me up, insists that there is more to life than darkness.  As Jews, we are co-creators of the universe.  Chanukkah reminds us to be the miracle that we celebrate: to be each others' pinpoints of light.

Now, as the darkness of New England winter closes in on us, we give each other gifts.  But the gifts are a shadow--they are not themselves.  We do not give gifts for their own sake, but for the sake of an act which is always holy.  The gifts we give each other are a message, a commemoration of that greatest of gifts: in the darkness, to be a light.