Celebrating who we are

Happy first day of Hanukah!  We're having a blast. I hope you are, too--eating lots of doughnuts and latkes? So far, we've done arts and crafts, (note--see sticker mosaics by squinting...) made robot dreidls and heard fun Hanukah music with banjo accompaniment. (yes, really)
It's been great!

Also, this piece ran in the Winnipeg Free Press today:
Recreation facilities often unfit for people with disabilities:
 Everyone pays for recreation facilities, so we should all be able to use them. That includes people with disabilities.

These topics seem to go together, in my mind...it's about that phrase "we all have a right." 
...Just as we all should have a right to celebrate religious freedom, all of us, even those with special needs, should have a right to access recreation, like swimming and skating.

This blog is now 13 years old!

  Click here to check out a bunch of other random fun blog stories about Hanukah.

Hanukah, Hanukka, Channuka...

More than one person has asked me recently how you spell Hanukah. Well, you spell it חנוכה or more traditionally,חֲנֻכָּה‎! What's that, you say? in English? :) This is a Hebrew word, and it is transliterated (or "Romanized") in a variety of ways. Here are a few I know of: Hanukah, Hanukka, Channukah, Chanuka, and the list goes on. Basically, if the way you spell it sounds remotely like the word itself? You're good! No mistakes here. Call it....alternate phonetic spellings.

We've also been to a party or two. One was a grown up, dress up affair with lots of good food. For another, I was asked to do a singalong at a community Hanukah event. It was maybe more accurately described as a carnival, or maybe a 3 ring circus. Anyhow, it went ok, although there were some organizational difficulties. There weren't a ton of takers for the Hanukah songs, although it's certainly a traditional thing to do on the holiday. The professor shot a photo or two with me as I sang with a few new friends. (This is an unidentified friend, no idea of names!) Note the red handspun sweater...it was held in an enormous gym.

Last night we had some friends over to eat dinner. (roast beef with chutney, potato pancakes --latkes, applesauce, coleslaw, dilly beans, smoked gold eye fish, rhubarb wine and raspberry cake...a feast!)

The professor also made sure our "gelt" (it means money in Yiddish, but also means chocolate coins for Hanukah) was appropriate to our big move this year. Usually we buy chocolate coins with Hebrew on them. This year, he found chocolate loonies and toonies.

Traditionally, you get treats each night during this holiday. Maybe sweets and maybe a bit of money on Hanukah, but no really enormous presents. Highlights from when I was little included the socks and underwear nights, the donate to charity in your honor night, and the calendar for next year night... My mom did buy us one or two big gifts but mostly we could predict what we'd receive.

This year, our big gift to ourselves was block heaters for our cars. Or, as our friend described it, long underwear for the car! It's not glamorous but it's a necessity here, especially since we don't have a garage.
Hanukah's a pretty low key holiday (on par with Arbor Day..), but we've been having a great one here in Winnipeg. Compared to places where we struggled to have anyone with which to celebrate this, or past years, it has been wonderful indeed.

It's a bit nippy still. Our weather has been roughly in the -24C range (roughly -11F) but with variation. For instance, it was -18F earlier this morning, and with windchill, this falls into the category of "Ohmygoodnessit'scoldoutthere."

We're staying toasty inside. Many of our windows have a little jack frost visiting. We've got double (and sometimes triple) paned windows in this house. However, the outside storm window is an old fashioned one, so sometimes there is a bit of ice build up there. The "inside" double paned window is a newer one, but in any case, it makes pretty decorations when you look out!
The dogs are hunkering down, for the most part, although they do get a bit stir crazy. We do one short walk a day, and otherwise it's run to the yard, do your thing, come right back in!

It is supposed to get warmer later this week (maybe even -9C or 16F!) and that "heat wave" will be enough to let us take a walk and enjoy ourselves outside again. In the meanwhile, I managed to skate indoors--much warmer inside than out--at a rink yesterday, and I kept myself upright and going round and round for 45 minutes. A new record! Soon I won't be so sore, I hope. I forgot I even had these muscles.

My goal is to get back to a place where the skating is more fun and less painful. I imagine that with practice, I'll get there. I'm really looking forward to getting out on the river even if I'm just walking on the footpath and not skating.

Wishing you winter joy, no matter what your weather!

on call

The advantages of not celebrating Christmas:
1) It’s a great time to catch up on your work
2) It’s a peaceful time to walk our dogs. No one is on the streets. At all.
3) Movie marathons can be fun, but only with DVD’s. Believe it or not, those who do not celebrate Christmas don’t dig watching the marathon of Christmas usually on the TV or radio this time of year.
4) We can bond with our favorite Chinese take-out place. (psst.Buddhists don’t celebrate Christian holidays either.)
5) We can be on call to help our Christian friends.

Although we definitely did #1-4 this year, #5 ended up being the most important. One of our friends (a Christian clergy member, actually) had a scary car accident on her way home from an 11 pm Christmas Eve service. She is a bit battered in body and spirit but ok. Her car is totaled. We’re going over to her house this evening and will, of course, be on call to help drive her to get to her car to fetch her belongings when the holiday is over.

Another friend called; her family went to visit her elderly father-in-law in Toronto. Apparently the father-in-law is in need of extra help and the family will stay longer. However, her eldest needs to return home so I will get to pick up her college age son at the bus station when he comes back into town in the next day or two.

A day like this makes it absolutely clear to me why we don’t all need to celebrate the same holidays and traditions. Some of us need to be completely without obligations to help each other. Since Jews don’t celebrate Christmas (the birth of Jesus isn’t part of our religious tradition, so we don’t commemorate it) we don’t have any religious services to attend, big fancy meals, or other commitments. We can help out others today. (Likewise, I’ve had some wonderful non-Jewish friends take time out to help me get ready for Passover or other Jewish holidays.)

I guess it’s nice to be needed!

Thanks so much for all your warm wishes for a happy Hanukah and your cheers for my new nephew Noodles. Reports are that he is doing well at home, but the grown-ups are sort of exhausted from his medicalized feeding schedule…every three hours, day and night, via a tube. Still, he is now home, and we are happy. It’s now the fifth night of Hanukah, but having the baby at home with his parents is a gift that we continue to cheer about.

Wishing you enjoyment, regardless of what you celebrate.