COZY HOLIDAY CAN’T BE DIMMED

Festival of Lights pretty much the same despite COVID

There has been much talk about how the holidays just won’t be the same this pandemic year. “The holidays,” of course, being the PC euphemism for Christmas.

As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently told reporters in Brussels: “I think that this year’s Christmas will be a different Christmas.” And it will be. A very COVID Christmas.

( Although, apparently not for the man who remains our president. The White House, continuing its tradition of hosting superspreader events, has promised lots of indoor holiday cheer. Because what is Christmas without decorated plexiglassencased food stations?)

Paperless Post has posted an endless scroll of creative ideas for “How to Celebrate the Holidays During COVID19,” including setting up individual outdoor wreathmaking tables, caroling with only your immediate household and dressing farflung family in matching onepiece PJs even if you’re not able to frolic in the same living room. These are all good, fun ideas. For Christmas.

To be clear: As a Jewish American, I am not peeved at Paperless Post, or any of the posts, for paying less attention to Hanukkah. I appreciate it! Paperless Post understands: Jews don’t need a long list of innovative ideas for celebrating Hanukkah, because Jews celebrate Hanukkah in a simple threestep process. The order may vary but the elements are the same: We light the menorah, we eat latkes, we give a little gift. Albeit eight gifts over eight nights — typically beginning with the big ticket ( a new bike!) and devolving into the strictly functional ( new underwear!). Kids might also spin the dreidel a few times and clamor for a mesh bag of goldfoil encased, slightlystaletasting chocolate gelt — procured lastminute

at the local Walgreens — and at some point, probably ask their parents: “Why can’t we get a Christmas tree?”

The novel coronavirus may be ruining Christmas, but it isn’t wrecking Hanukkah. Hanukkah will be just fine. Unlike everything else in 2020, Hanukkah will be, more or less, the same.

America’s marketing machine has done its best to make the Festival of Lights more “festive” over the years. There are Hanukkah sweaters bedazzled with phrases like “Get Lit!” and fuzzy blueandwhite stockings awaiting embroidery with names like Noah and Ruth and “Shark Tank” hittoys like “Mensch on a Bench” from a company with the mission: “To bring more funukkah to Hanukkah.” One winter, in a southern Florida yard, I spotted a 7foot white bear sporting a blue yarmulke holding a massive dreidel in his Star of Davidbranded paw. The bear was blowing not in the breeze but by electric blower, confirming that 21st century Hanukkah is clearly taking its cues not necessarily from Christmas but from car dealerships.

Instead of “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells,” we’ve got the Maccabeats ( who are really good, btw), as well as Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song,” which has been an annual hit since 1994.

But hoopla, like ham, has never been a big Hanukkah thing. At its core, Hanukkah is a minorleague holiday, meant to commemorate the Maccabees rebuilding of the Jewish temple after it was destroyed around 170 BCE by King Antiochus IV, who had outlawed the Jewish religion and forced Jews to worship Greek gods. It honors the miracle oil that kept the temple’s eternal flame flickering for eight nights when it should have only lasted one.

We are not even obligated to fly east to see family in honor of the occasion, although it’s always welcomed if we do. For most Jews, Hanukkah has always been an inward, athome, afterworkonaWednesday sort of affair. Its symbolic food is the humble potato for crying out loud!

I mean, of course, I’m sad I can’t have my cousins over for the First Night to almost start a fire. I’m sad our friends can’t host their annual Latke Bar party. ( You know, like a sundae bar but with latkes instead of ice cream and trout roe and shredded brisket in lieu of chocolate sauce and cherries — an idea I loved so much I stole it to include in “Eat Something,” the cookbook I coauthored with Wise Sons’ Evan Bloom.) But! We can, and we will, still fry potatoes as a family and slather them with homemade rustic applesauce, maybe even mix them with kimchi. ( Another beloved recipe from the book.)

Make no mistake: Jews love Christmas. We love the cookieexchange parties and the fancy cocktail parties and the gingerbreadhousemaking parties and the overserved, tinseltoned office parties! But they are not ours.

This year, an almost aimless sense of calm and quiet will seep notsosoftly through December. There will be no afterwork “holiday drinks” and “Closed for a Private Event” signs on restaurant doors; no crowded escalators and jampacked shops; no soaring church choirs and no blockbusterstacked cinemas; no Santacon swarming the streets and unsuspecting children sitting on Santa’s lap; no friends and family from near and far gathering around the table and tree …

Instead, we will cozy up on our own couches and cook in our own kitchens. ( In case my husband reads this: preferably in new slippers as mine, by now, are wellworn.) The holidays will feel different this year. They might actually feel a little like Hanukkah.

Rachel Levin is the coauthor of “Eat Something: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews.” Email: Culture@ sfchronicle. com

Maren Caruso Hanukkah has always been an athome, afterworkonaWednesday sort of affair, Rachel Levin writes. Its symbolic food is the humble potato for crying out loud.