My response to those who mock Kwanzaa as a "made-up holiday"

[starroute]

8. My mother always insisted Hanukkah was essentially made-up

When I was little, she explained to be that Hanukkah had never been anything but a minor political holiday, celebrating the Persian Empire being kicked out of Israel, and that at most it might involve spinning dreidls and giving the children pennies and candy. But after World War II, Jews who were worried that their children wanted to celebrate Christmas, because it had trees and presents and all the good stuff, inflated Hanukkah into a Christmas-equivalent and started referring to their Christmas trees as "Hanukkah bushes."

She didn't think much of that. She figured that if you wanted a Christmas tree you should just have one and not try to pretend it was something else.

I've never seen my mother's account of things anywhere else, but I have no reason to doubt her memories of the way it was (or wasn't) when she was a little girl.

I should add, by the way, that when I was maybe six or seven, some family friend gave me a large plastic dreidl that I never took much interest in because it didn't spin very well. But two or three years later, I took it out of the closet and accidentally dropped it -- and the top came off revealing a whole lot of really stale chocolate-covered raisins.

And that's what Hanukkah means to me.