Happy Thanksgiving!

My little chef.

We Jews have a prayer of thanks for everything. Perhaps that's why we find it so easy to embrace Thanksgiving. Or maybe it's because we love rituals that involve food. Or because we love to eat.

Does your family have a Jewish Thanksgiving tradition? Tell us about it! And have a wonderful holiday, whether your turkey is kosher, non-kosher or sculpted out of tofu.

How Do We "De-Materialize" Hannukah?

I love Hannukah. I love the candles. I love the latkes. I love the parties and the dreidles and the chocolate gelt.  And, of course, I love the presents. I especially love shopping for presents. I love picking out eight perfect gifts for each of my kids and my husband, plus one for each of the other members of my family. Yet I know that gifts are not what this holiday is about.

I’d like to think that we’re not raising our kids to be materialistic, yet I’m surrounded by toys wherever I go in my house. We have stacks of DVDs, shelves full of books, tubs of crayons and markers and Play Dough. There are times when I can’t take a step without my foot landing on a Lego or tiny car.

Sometimes I look at all the stuff we’ve got and suddenly I remember watching a PBS reality show about 10 years ago called “Frontier House.”  The people on that show volunteered to live like the settlers in the late 1800s for an entire summer.

There was an episode when one of the families made a wooden toy—I think it was a horse—for their son’s birthday. The narrator pointed out that settlers didn’t usually give presents on birthdays. Suddenly, this kid went from having maybe one toy to two, and it was a huge deal. (At the end of the series, we see him back home surrounded by all his modern stuff. How surreal that must have been for him!)

Remembering that episode makes me think of how much stuff we surround ourselves and our kids with and how that’s something new to this modern world. I suspect that it may not be so healthy. It’s certainly not traditional.

With that in mind, during the next month I want to look about at how Hannukah was traditionally celebrated. And I want to hear from you—how do you think we can put less emphasis on the material goods and more on what Hannukah should be about? Please share!

Lessons Learned

The sukkah is dismantled and neatly stored in the garage.The decorations are in the attic. Noah's asking about Hannukah presents already! But before I leave Sukkot behind, here are a few things I discovered:

1.  It’s never a bad time to shop for Sukkot. Just this morning a mom told me that she’s buying her family’s sukkah right now for next year. Turns out they’re all on sale, of course! This is also a great time to buy all the “Halloween” decorations—fake pumpkins, orange lights, etc.—that the stores are trying to get rid of. Personally, I’m waiting for the day after Christmas, when I plan to buy tons of lights to string up in my sukkah next fall.

2. Next year I’m buying the bamboo mat roof. It won’t get yucky in the rain and I won’t have to beg for branches from my neighbor’s tree removal company. Which leads me to …

3. S’chach is everywhere when you don’t need it.

4. Wet hay is yucky.

5. My husband is a great sport. I dragged him into this project, and he actually thanked me! Turns out he had a fantastic time building the sukkah and bonding with Noah, and we all enjoyed entertaining friends and family.

6. There’s a sukkah for every budget and every ability. I saw one sukkah made from two pieces of lattice tacked to the side of a barn. I saw another with stained glass windows. I saw a sukkah that popped up like my kid’s toy tent and others that were great works of art.

7. Don’t eat your etrog. L

8. Think all that rain and wind was bad? At least it didn’t snow!