Alright, I don’t actually hate Hanukkah, but after confessing my love for all things Christmas the other week, I thought the symmetry might be nice. Also I’m a troll (hadn’t you heard?) and I wanted to get you all riled up.
There are many things about Hanukkah that I enjoy: latkes are dank, eight nights of presents are swell and I have one my fair share of gelt in games of dreidel. But there’s plenty about the holiday that totally blows, and as HEEB’s resident complainer, well, I’m gonna vent.
Some thing about Hanukkah that are completely wack:
Eight Nights of Presents: This is pretty misleading. Sure, when you’re little your parents probably got you something every night so you wouldn’t feel so bad about not having the fantastical Christmas morning present-palooza. But, once you started to get older you no longer received nightly gifts and would instead get some big gifts the first night. Then all you had to look forward to for the remaining seven nights was curdled sour cream on your latkes and carpel tunnel from trying to perfect that perfect dreidel twist.
Latkes: Delicious, but also fattening. Plus, they’re a BITCH to make. Spending anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour peeling and shredding potatoes and onions is bad enough, but then you get to spend the rest of the holiday season nursing third degree burns from all that hot oil splashing on you while you cooked. I bet the Macabees never had to deal with THAT. Oh, right, they had bigger problems…
Family: This goes without saying for any major holiday, but this time of year it’s more likely that you have relatives coming into town or you feel obligated (read: “guilted”) to go home and see your parents, who will use the opportunity to question all your life choices, tell you that you look tired (which, honestly, you should never say to someone; It’s a sort-of-nice way to tell somebody they look like shit) and make you pretend to care about any new cousins/nephews/grandchildren that have been spawned in the past year.
Despite these annoyances, major and minor alike, I am looking forward to celebrating the festival of donuts lights with my friends and family and I hope you have a wonderful holiday. Just be careful when lighting your candles – I have set too many obnoxious relatives on fire…by accident, of course.
Via FunnyOrDie
Um, it’s spelled “Chanukah.”
Things like this make me sad. I understand that it is supposed to be funny, but this does nothing to stem the tide of assimilation. It also betrays a lack of knowledge about the beauty and importance of Chanukah. In some ways, it is actually the most important Jewish holiday. Somewhat ironically, part of its message is that, as Jews, we should be proud of who we are and not give in to the outside, dominant, culture.