CHUBBY THE DREIDEL

It turned them around on the holiday in a big way.

When my boys, Marc and Eric, were growing up in the late 1970s, we lived in a neighborhood of Jews and Christians in a suburb north of New York. It was a few dozen split-level houses on a dead-end street. With so little traffic, kids played outside, making no distinction between their front yards and the road. Parents socialized as the kids played. Many of us became close friends. Chanukah (also spelled Hanukkah) and Christmas saw a merry mingling of Jewish and Christian families gathering to celebrate together.

Chanukah commemorates the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem around 200 B.C., when oil that was supposed to last one night lasted eight. We light the menorah for eight nights, and children play dreidel games with “gelt,” foil-covered chocolate that represents the coins the Maccabees minted to mark their military victory over the Syrians.

Growing up in the Bronx, New York, my brother and I received our underwear rations for the year at Chanukah. That was our gift. Can you believe it? I don’t recall if we got a pair each night or if they were presented to us in one fell swoop.

Raising my own family, I continued our Chanukah traditions—except for the underwear part. I vowed never to give my boys that as a gift.

We invited our Christian neighbors over for jelly doughnuts, potato latkes and candlelighting. Then we joined our friends at their homes to trim their Christmas trees and sing carols.

We took the boys into Manhattan to stroll the lavishly decked out streets of Times Square and Fifth Avenue. Then we went over to Rockefeller Center to glimpse the colossal tree and admire the skaters spinning and gliding around the rink.

But that time of year can be hard on Jewish kids. Christmas is everywhere.

Marc and Eric said Chanukah felt less important. That saddened me. I tried to think of a way to inject a little more funukah into Chanukah.

I decided we needed a giant dreidel. We constructed a wire frame and plastered it in papier-mache. The process was a sticky, gooey mess, but tons of fun. When the 40-by-40-inch dreidel finally was finished and painted, the boys tried to put their arms around it.

“We can’t hug it! It’s too chubby.”

So it was that Chubby became the focal point of our eight-night Chanukah celebrations—and the hit of the street. Everybody loved Chubby.

Our joint holiday celebrations and trips to Manhattan continued, but my boys came to see Chanukah as the best holiday ever. After all, no one else had anything like Chubby the dreidel.

It brought us many years of joy and now does the same for the next generation.

I tried to think of a way to inject a little more funukah into Chanukah.