“Are you sad that Chanukah is coming to an end?” The text — from a non-Jewish friend — was accompanied by a sad-faced emoji. I looked at the black sky through my window. “It’s already over.”

And then: “No. It didn’t even occur to me to be sad.” Although that was a lie: I was definitely sad about how much work it was going to be to get the wax off of four chanukiahs, particularly the pre-school construction of felt, Elmer’s glue, and the beaming face of my middle son as a toddler (at fourteen, he grumbles much more than he beams).

But sad about the end of Chanukah? Jewish holidays bombard us constantly. Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, Simchas Torah, Chanukah — and that’s just the autumn term! It’s not like the Christian and secular world where there are basically two festival days that have to be stretched across the whole year (which could be why Starbucks was already bringing out their gingerbread and eggnog-flavoured lattes in September).

Then I felt slightly guilty at my lack of remorse for the end of the holiday. After all, hadn’t I decked our mantel (I don’t have a table under the window) with Chanukah bunting and a
festive tablecloth? Hadn’t I bought a Chanukah dress and matching socks and headband (and even gone to university and lectured in them)? Hadn’t I made latkes and donuts and filled my social media feed with pictures of our lit candles each and every of the eight nights?

But still. “It’s a minor holiday,” I explained. “It just gets bigged up because of the Christmas
overwhelm.”

“I KNOW,” she replied.

“I mean,” I continued, trying to sound more sentimental (or at least more human), “it was nice to have the nightly family time.” That is mostly true. I don’t mention that two of the nights the kids were so rambunctious they almost set the house on fire, or that the third time they misbehaved, they had all their screens taken away and told they would not get them back until they all sang, in harmony, every single verse of Ma’oz Tzur, even the ones no one (even me, the resident super Jew) knows.

“I’m a little sad,” I say, “But on the plus side, it’s already Tu Be’Shvat next month.”