2002-12-03 10:49 p.m.
A Tale of Two Holidays, Part 2
Holiday #2: Hanukah Peninsula Style
Friday night was the first night of Hanukah. TheBoy's aunt and uncle usually host a dinner for the occasion, but this year their kitchen is getting remodeled, so TheBoy's uncle's cousin B. was hosting. (B. also hosts Thanksgiving every year, so she was a little worn out.)
No shoes are allowed in B's house and I was barefoot and had a glass of wine in my hand within 30 seconds of arriving. My kind of place, but then TheBoy's family are my kind of people. It's really nice not only getting along with all of his family but really liking most of them (and having them like me back). Hanging out with them is actually fun. It's a very nice change from some of the stiff, awkward family dinners I was subjected to with past boyfriends.
About half an hour after arriving, we started dinner, first doing the prayers, which I did my shiksa best to follow along with. Singing them out of tune is a family tradition, so my tuneful but mangled version created just the right contrast. Then B.'s father, who must have been about 80, read some, and bucking tradition, he was both serious and in-tune. I imagined him as a little boy in the teens or twenties listening to his own father read the same words. None of the traditions of the pack of Bay Area agnostics that raised me has anywhere near the same weight of history behind it.
Dinner was brisket and a very wide variety of veggie things; TheBoy's older cousin, who wasn't there, is a recently-ex-vegetarian, so their family is in the habit of supplying many vegetarian-friendly dishes. And pie! I love pumpkin pie.
Then B. busted out her set of the Book of Knowledge, an encyclopedia circa 1931, and we each grabbed a volume, thumbed through it and read random snippets aloud. "How Gaslight Is Generated." "Why You Should Not Be Friends With Everyone." "Queer Creatures of Mother Nature."
The candles on the menorahs started to melt each other, and TheBoy's aunt, younger cousin and I spent a good ten minutes watching one particular candle melt, trying to predict whether it would catch from one of the surrounding candles or not. (Yes, candles, plural, even though it was only the first night, and menorahs, plural. B. is very much in favor of interpreting the rules in whatever way allows for the most candle-lighting.)
Then we toddled out into the cold, happy and well-fed.