Night One/Two

So whoops. Thought tonight was the first night of Chanukah. It was the second. Good to know. That should just show you how horribly Jewish my family and I are. Anyway, I was planning (actually, the idea just came to me minutes ago) that as the token Jewish SD writer (are we writers if we don't really write anything? probably not, right?), I should celebrate Chanukah on the blog by posting each of the eight (eight!) nights of the festival of lights. I'm sure I won't make it to five, and it will be interesting and funny for exactly zero nights, but I'm home and have absolutely nothing better to do.

Since I already fucked this up, I'll just try to make this a bit longer than whatever length every night will be. Let's just start out with some brief information about the holiday, mixed in with some history. I know, I know. That's boring. If I wanted that I would've gone to Hebrew school, except I didn't want to get molested. Wait, that's not Jews. Take that churches! Go Jewish people, we don't molest (and get caught).

So, uh, Chanukah. Did you know some people spell it Hanukkah? And plenty others just spell it completely wrong. How about that? Interesting, huh? It's eight nights, because eight nights is actually how long a Jewish week is, and Chanukah is a Jewish-week-long celebration of all things Jewish. Reports have it starting in 1968, while Jews were still in JewZoos. Imprisoned by Christians for entertainment and population control purposes, Jews were split up and spread throughout the country, often times confined to tiny spaces where non-Jews could pay to gawk at them. For a small additional fee, the non-Jews could purchase pork and feed the Jews (if you're wondering why we don't eat pork now, that's why. Bad memories. It must similar to what a black person feels when he/she shackles himself/herself to a boat traveling from Africa to America. Or when us whites whip them).

Well, Jews started banding together. They would sing lovely hymns about pet cemeteries, not sleeping til Brooklyn and wanting to be sedated. These were later incorporated into songs by Jewish musicians. During December, all the JewZoo owners would celebrate Christmas, and the Jews were left unattended to, unfed and uncleaned for long periods of time while everyone took off for the holiday. Jews were upset over their treatment, especially at this time, so in protest they created a holiday that lasted eight days, and said they couldn't work during any of those days. The first year, they overlapped it with Christmas, so it didn't work out, as the JewZoos were already closed. Jews then started holding Chanuakah different dates every year, but always in December, so the JewZoos would have to close down most of the entire month. The starting date for Chanukah each year is picked out of a hat.

The first Chanukahs weren't much celebrations. Jews just got together and laughed at how the JewZoo had to close down over such a bullshit holiday. This was later reversed on Jews when schools only closed down for Chanukah if it overlaps with Christmas. The real partying didn't start until 1974, when Jews were freed from JewZoos. They were freed just as November was ending, and that year's Chanukah was starting the first week of December. As the Torah describes it, it was "complete and utter madness. Not a Jew went sober, a penis went outside of a vagina and a vagina went unfilled by a penis for eight nights. It was awesome."

And thus, Chanukah became a very popular, underground holiday. Non-Jews started converting just to celebrate the madness. In 1978, The Ramones, an all-Jewish band, released "I Wanna Be Sedated," the first JewZoo hymn heard outside of JewZoos. It embodied the frustration Jews felt on Christmas, with such lyrics as "Nothing to do/ Nowhere to go/ I wanna be sedated." Jews noticed that pretty much everywhere was closed for Christmas, leaving them with nothing to do. Many Jews took the getting sedated part of the song to be a command that they get drunk and/or high every night of Chanukah. So they did.

Because of its underground status, and it being a fairly new holiday, during it's first couple of decades Chanukah was only celebrated by the Jewish and hip, which if you're wondering, never overlap. It gained a mainstream following once Adam Sandler performed the first "Chanukah Song" on Dmur's favorite show, "Saturday Night Live" in 1994. The song was largely a hit because it was mostly Sandler naming famous Jewish people, and all Jewish people love other Jews, especially successful ones. The hip people slowly stopped celebrating Chanukah because the holiday was now very popular. Ads went from wishing us a "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays." It's now illegal for ads for anything other than Bibles, churches, Santa outfits and Kenny Chesney albums to wish viewers a "Merry Christmas." It has been illegal since 1995, when the now famous court case of Schwarztenbaumbergmansteinowitz v. United States ruled that it was discriminatory for ads to wish only "Merry Christmas." The Schwarztenbaumbergmansteinowitz's were represented by every non-black lawyer in the country, and together they used what's now known as the "Sandler Defense," where they collectively went through every Jew Sandler named in the "Chanukah Song" and all the great things they've done in their careers, guilting the jury into feeling as though by wishing us only a "Merry Christmas" companies were directly insulting the nation's greatest entertainers... and David Lee Roth.

That's widely regarded as the instant Chanuakh became a "legit" holiday, but many of the original celebraters of the holiday now saw it as lame. Many tried to recreate the Chanukah magic with other holidays, but none panned out. Stores now had an aisle of blue and white decorations, the dreidel was invent to combat sleigh riding and this odd nine-branched birthday candle looking item started popping up in windows all over the country. This structure, or a menorah, comes from Chanukah's early beginnings, when it was a much more punk holiday. The middle candle stays lit every night, as a "fuck you" to non-celebrators. Then, for each night another candle is lit so we can remember what night we're on, since during Chanukah all the Jews are intoxicated or high. The Torah doesn't specify what we are supposed to get drunk or high on, and many Jews switch it up nightly. For me, tonight is a lovely mixture of white out and heroin, with a dab of caffeine injected into my body. The structure was named a menorah because it rhymes with Torah. Jews like when things rhyme- yarmulke and Chanukah, for another example.

Every night, we are to receive presents. This is, of course, another swipe at Christmas, where presents are exchanged the morning of the first day. The presents thing didn't start up until after our time in the JewZoos, since there we had nothing. Once the Jews were free, the presents in those early years were mostly in the form of drugs or sexual acts that one partner wouldn't be willing to do any other night of the year... unless they run out of gift ideas by night 6 or so. But since joining the mainstream, Chanukah's nightly gift giving has become much more tame. Maybe one big gift and yo-yo's, dreidels and socks every other night.

Although it is quite corporate today, it's important to remember where Chanukah came from, and to understand why we do all that we do during these eight nights. The minute we forget why Chanukah was started, to piss off Christians, the minute we go back to JewZoos. So I urge my fellow Jews, celebrate your freedom, give gifts, drink, light up, snort, inject, do what you must to make this holiday exciting (and bearable). This is our time, treat it as such.

Make sure to come back tomorrow to see what else I could possibly write about this holiday.