I was invited by Bernie from Needle & Foot to join in her Holiday Tales & Traditions Blog Hop. Be sure you visit the other participating bloggers listed below to read about their holidays.
Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is a minor Jewish holiday. The traditional story is that in response to the suppression of their religion, Jews rose up and rebelled, eventually taking back control of their land and re-sanctifying the Temple in Jerusalem. The legend is that when the Temple was re-sanctified, there was only enough oil to burn for one day, but the oil miraculously lasted eight days, just long enough to resupply the Temple. This "miracle of the oil" brings us to our traditions of lighting candles for eight nights and eating fried foods.
My favorite part of the holiday is the lighting of the hanukkiah (often mistakenly called a menorah). This is done nightly for 8 nights. As a family, we light the candles while singing the Hanukkah blessings. These two photos are from the 6th night, yesterday evening. The kids are each holding a shamash (a helper candle), used to light the candles in the hanukkiah. The first photo above was taken at a community celebration years ago, a lovely event where we typically come together for lighting the candles and celebrating at our synagogue.
One of the by-products of being at home 24/7 for 9 months is that my husband has started to cook more often, developing a wider repertoire of skills in the kitchen. Saturday evening he made latkes from scratch for the first time. They were delicious and perfect! (I like mine with sour cream and applesauce.)
Thanks for visiting. Happy Holidays! I wish you a safe and happy season.
Hop over to read about the holiday memories from these other quilt bloggers:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
