Hanukkah Rebellion Smells Like Teen Spirit

The holiday season can get pretty hectic in our house. Now, I know this is true in lots of other houses, but we’ve got a whole slew of holidays that we celebrate. The big ones are Christmas and Hanukkah. It’s not bad when a week or so separates the two, but this year Christmas falls right smack dab in the middle of Hanukkah.

Hanukkah is not a big deal among Jewish holidays and it’s definitely no competition for Christmas. With its eight nights of lighting candles, though, it takes commitment. Particularly now that I’m working evenings, it can be difficult to get everyone together to say the prayers and light the menorahs. I also like to light a driveway menorah consisting of luminaria that burn into the wee hours. We start with one on the first night and add one until there are eight burning on the last night of Hanukkah.

We used to give the children a small gift every day of Hanukkah. I stopped that when they expected a gift on the ninth day. Now, they are allowed to have a friend over to share our festivities. My daughter’s best friend, who has been with us for three Hanukkahs, looks forward to it almost as much as we do.

This year, the holiday is tinged with a little sadness. At our house, Hanukkah is a holiday for children and our son is no longer a child. He struggles to find a way to carve out an identity for himself and, at least this year, has staked out Hanukkah as his territory. The first night we lit the candles, he refused to speak his part of the prayers, citing difficulty with the religious content. Ours is a fairly liberal tradition, but still too religious for his current teen tastes. So, he lit the candles but that was all. Why it’s ok to light the candles and listen to the prayers is a puzzle to me, but most of his behavior is kind of puzzling.

Most puzzling of all was his lack of rebellion when I said, “Come on, you’re going to help me light the luminaria.” “Why,” he asked. “Because you need to know how to do this in case I can’t.” I explained that I would be attending a party the next night so the driveway would go unlit unless he did it. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to do this,” he said, as he followed me out the front door. I gave him instructions on lighting the little candle resting in the sand at the bottom of the bag. He did it his own way and the candle was lit before I finished explaining how to light the candle.

My son is a young man and, apparently, Hanukkah is no holiday for a young man, at least not this one. But he knows how to keep it. I’m confident he’ll know what to do when he has children of his own.