__
__
Okay, the celebrations don’t start until sundown, but I couldn’t be sure I’d be here then.
May all of us always have a candle to ward off the darkness, and the courage to light it, especially at the time when the nights are longest!
(If you think this is dreadful, well, I did consider posting the “Top Hanukkah Song 2012 “. But considering how Cole feels about the Beastie Boys, it would be the first time in months he paid attention to one of my posts & then I’d be the only front-pager summarily ejected from Balloon Juice… )
__
Raven
Which one is dreadful?
NotMax
Obviously another salvo in the War on Christmas.
:)
PurpleGirl
Blessed holy day, Anne Laurie and all Balloon Juicers.
I don’t think the Matisyahu video/song is dreadful. His voice is pretty good but the music style isn’t what you expect. I played two other of his videos. Not my cup of tea, but not awful.
Jelly donuts and latkes….
Raven
@PurpleGirl: I put both of them on my Facebook for my Jewish friends. Most of them are not up yet, should I delete them?
PurpleGirl
@Raven: I wouldn’t, your friends will have all day to find them.
Raven
@PurpleGirl: I put the (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To DREIDEL) up too!
c u n d gulag
When I was a kid growing up in the 1960’s in Queens, NYC, I used to envy my Jewish friends – they had over a week of getting cool stuff, while we had one lousy day.
And especially the kids whose parents were divorced. Man, did THEY make out!
Now, though I’m not a believer, I envy the Jewish people because their sacred holiday isn’t commercialized beyond all recognition of what the holiday is celebrating in the first place.
No Hunukkah songs in the malls, beginning after Holloween.
No Hanukkah candles burning away on a TV station for days on end, with Hanukkah songs playing in the background.
No Hanukkah TV kiddie cartoon specials beginning right after Veteran’s Day, running right up to the holiday.
No Hanukkah hacking down of trees.
No Hanukkah reworking of other countries mythologies and childrens stories – there’s no fat bearded Jewish elf who brings gifts to people by breaking and entering their domiciles, and whose sled is pulled by a red-nosed camel or moose.
And most importantly – no fat ignorant Irish troll on a faux news channel screaming about some BS ‘WAR ON HANUKKAH!’
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
PurpleGirl
@c u n d gulag: Yes, that’s all true. I’ve been told that Hanukkah is actually a minor holy day and the American celebration of it is a response to balance out Christmas. It’s more celebrated for children and as they become adults the extent of celebrations often are toned down. (Then again I know a lot of science fiction fans who are Jewish and they keep celebrating it as if they were still kids.)
Latkes and Jelly donuts.
WereBear
How is it possible for Fox Viewers to believe there is a War on Christmas? Well, I suppose if anyone would…
In the sixties, we moved to Florida, and so embedded was the Currier & Ives Christmas pattern that our parents got us a book designed to reassure children that Christmas comes, even in Florida.
Happy Hanukkah!
c u n d gulag
@PurpleGirl:
“Latkes and Jelly donuts.”
NOW, you’re talkin’!
And some nice fatty pastrami, with some tart and spicy mustard on seeded rye bread! YUM! ! !
arguingwithsignposts
@WereBear:
The persecution complex runs deep in evangelical christianity. Helps keep the collection plate full.
Starfish
Anne Laurie, if John Cole can put up with Tunch and Rosie, I am sure he can take a post with a Beastie Boys video.
jeffreyw
@c u n d gulag:
the Conster
I hate Christmas, especially the music. I have to have earplugs to stand being in stores now. I wish there really was a war on Christmas – it should be nuked from space. It’s the biggest fucking overhyped commercialized wasteful worshiping of mammon ever possibly invented, and has been designed to make everyone feel inadequately generous, or peaceful, or merry, since the pressure starts being applied before Thanksgiving to think about it and prepare for it. I’ve been sick for a week and have to go out today and do some fucking shopping for the fucking Christmas dinner we’re hosting in two fucking weeks, because if I don’t get a goose when they come in, they’ll be gone and then it will be OH NOES NO CHRISTMAS GOOSE??!! Gah.
ETA: Happy Hannukah!
TheMightyTrowel
@the Conster: the only good thing about xmas is xmas lights. I fricking love gaudy, flashing primary coloured lights. It’s the best part of december.
the Conster
@TheMightyTrowel:
This I agree with. My inner trailer park trash wants to come out every year I decorate the tree, but no one lets me use tinsel. If it were up to me I’d have no ornaments, just lights and sparkly garland and TONS of tinsel, and the lights would all have those little aluminum reflectors behind them so that my tree could be seen from space. Instead, it ends up being Pottery Barn tasteful. My mother used to have real tinsel – the metal stuff – that she carefully saved from year to year. I can still see and hear it. You put it on strand by strand, but a LOT of it, and then it just picked up all the light and SPARKLED. That’s what I’m talking about.
jeffreyw
I am Method. I am Thread. I NEED!
Amir Khalid
More than half of Malaysians are Muslim. In America, those professing Christianity outnumber everyone else. Christians there complaining about a war on Christmas sound about as credible as as a Muslim here would, if he were to start complaining about a war on Eid al-Fitri.
WereBear
You are so right. There was a recent interview with Rick Warren where he admitted a lot of the homophobia is fueled by their kind of Christianity, and I read another one where this type of Xantian behavior gets mostly blamed for the suicides of gay teens.
How much better would all of us, not just its victims, be if they were actual Christians? The mind, it boggles.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
We need to put Eid back in Eid al-Fitri.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
Fighting the good fight.
Geoduck
Can’t forget this classic song of the season.
amk
ed henry, the pox news tool, is whining about the whc assholes being excluded from the private swearing in ceremony of the kenyan muslin.
jurassicpork
Exercises in Futility: Counting out the GOP.
hep kitty
@jeffreyw: Itty Bitty Kitty!
c u n d gulag
@jeffreyw:
OY!
To DIE for! ! !
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Any word on the goings down in Michigan? Last I saw, it was essentially a lost cause and the GOP were free to plow through their Right-To-Work bullshit without any argument. Please tell me something happened recently to stem that tide.
Joel
Hanukkah Harry time!
rdldot
@the Conster: Man, are you my brother/sister? My mom made us put the aluminum tinsel on strand by strand, and also took it off and saved it till next year. My friends just threw it at the tree. Really, the only thing you need for Christmas is the tree. I would have a tree in my house year round if they would sell them. Also like the lights. Went out with some friends last night to view the lights in the ritzy part of town and one home/mansion (not kidding this is Houston River Oaks mucho money) had a real human Santa in a Sleigh. The Reindeers were fake, though. Slackers.
Davis X. Machina
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: Measure passed, signed and passed and attached as a rider to an appropriations bill, so it can’t be un-done by referendum/initiative/people’s veto.
Or so I understand. Wait till 2014, throw the bums out, and repeal, seems the only way forward.
gnomedad
Via pourmecoffee: To celebrate Hanukkah, Chris Hayes discussed strategies for dealing with a finite amount of oil.
rdldot
Going out today to get a Christmas tree. Then lighting Hanukkah candles tonight. Love the tree and love candles. I studied Judaism for a while and if I was going to be anything, I would be Jewish. But, just not the churchie type.
Schlemizel
@c u n d gulag:
Very well done! I’m totally stealing that, thanks!
Schlemizel
@jeffreyw: What a QT
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Davis X. Machina:
In other words, Michigan workers are fucked until 2015 at the absolute earliest and that’s only presuming there’s enough Democratic momentum to get it repealed immediately.
Brilliant. GOP manages to remind us that they can still essentially do anything they want on the state level because Fuck You Hippie Leeches, That’s Why.
c u n d gulag
@Schlemizel:
When I “take” something someone wrote, I don’t think of it as “stealing” – I think of it as ‘liberating!’
So, liberate away, my friend!
arguingwithsignposts
@c u n d gulag: Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.
the Conster
@rdldot:
My mom (may she be decorating for Christmas in heaven) loved her tinsel – she wrapped it the long way in rolled up newspaper, and although she let us put it on the tree, she of course came along and “fixed” it. We probably used the same tinsel for 10 years or more. I don’t even think you can buy it anymore or I would – that mylar crap just makes a damn mess and you end up wearing it everywhere instead.
JPL
Since there are a few around here, my age, do you remember glass wax xmas decorations. link
Count me as a former lover of tinsel.
Happy hanukkah!
cathyx
Tinsel is nowhere to be had. Funny, it turned out to be an environmental nightmare. Who knew?
PurpleGirl
@JPL: Yes, I do remember it but I didn’t remember what it was called. I’d love to decorate my windows that way again. I don’t remember when my mother stopped using it or what happened to the stencils but I always liked it. Thanks for the link.
ETA: My father took care of putting on the tinsel and taking it off the tree. I use the newer garland stuff when I have a tree. (Might not have one this year. Maybe just some pine branches in a vase with ornaments.)
quannlace
That would be Uncle Schlomo.
Annie, bless you for not putting up ‘Eight Crazy Nights.”
rdldot
@JPL: Was it really wax? I remember it being more like thick water color type paint. But I hadn’t thought about that for a long time. I think now you use the stencils and spray foam. I’ve seen that recently. And I found tinsel years ago that was still aluminum – you can get it at specialty places. The other stuff sucks.
Happy Hanukkah, all…
JPL
@rdldot: It hardened like a wax and I assume that is how it came about the name.
It was easier to clean the windows than spray foam or snow.
lamh35
@the Conster: I tend to get sick of the “pop” Christmas songs (although there are a few I like) but the Soulful/R&B Christmas versions I do love to hear. nothing better to hear than Donnie Hathaway’ s This Christmas, except maybe hearing the Temptations Silent Night or Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, or maybe some down South White Christmas by Otis Redding.
PurpleGirl
@JPL: The stencils were a thick waxy coated paper, as I remember now. Man, this is great thread. (grin)
Roger Moore
@gnomedad:
Win.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@JPL:
Thaaaaaanks for the memory…
Really and truly, thank you. Your comment put me back in touch with a trove of my Fifties childhood memories.
With gratitude I offer you a YouTube clip of Winky Dink and You.
JPL
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: wow. I remembered drawing on the tv but forgot the name of the show.
Thank you!
gelfling545
@JPL: Oh goodness, I remember doing this. I remember their tv commercial too – to the tune of Jingle Bells, the last line being “Glass Wax stencils make your home a winter wonderland!” Wow. I’m old.
PurpleGirl
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Oh, boy, another of the 50s memories. I had the green sheet you put on the TV and the magic crayons. Early interactive TV, lol.
WereBear
Tinsel is not good for households with pets, who can eat it and get very sick. I never liked it anyway… too much trouble.
Since we’ve had three kittens in the last five years, we stick with the foot high fake tree with the fiber optic ornaments wired on. Still with us!
schrodinger's cat
Happy Hanukkah everyone. Also too, I has a question.
I will be in Philly next week, near the Convention Center. Are there Balloon Juicers in Philly or know Philly who could give me recommendations on what to do, where to eat etc. It will be much appreciated. I don’t really know Philly much, have driven through it a couple of times on the way to DC but never really spent much time there.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
The greatest sin, apparently, against Christmas is to not say “Merry Christmas”, but to instead wish others “Happy Holidays”.
Do not ask me why this is such a fucking sin. Please don’t. I can’t explain it, other than the intense desire of fundigelicals to ram their asshole invisible sky buddy down the throats of everyone around them, and if someone raises the slightest objection in any way, they are persecuting said fundigelicals.
Oh, and Chappy Chanukkah, as one of my Jewish friends in high school used to write on chalkboards every year.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@PurpleGirl:
We couldn’t afford the official kit and so at a particularly challenging time for Winky Dink I whipped out my crayons and helped him by drawing directly on the screen. Fortunately, my mom was a very understanding person and I got off with having to clean the TV screen and an admonishment.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thank you, and a Chappy Chanukkah to all as well.
c u n d gulag
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
WINKY DINK! ! !
If I remember right, I got in a lot of trouble, because I used to draw right on the TV screen with my crayons.
We couldn’t afford that screen you were supposed to order, and put over your TV screen.
“But Mom, he’ll fall into the river if I don’t draw a bridge!”
What a putz I was…
And, no, I DIDN’T send those green pieces of paper to the late, great, Soupy Sales.
Schlemizel
@JPL:
We used to do this with a glass cleaner. At the moment I don’t remember the brand but it left a white residue that looked just like that. Clean up was a breeze as a bit more glass cleaner & it wiped right off.
I know other people used white liquid shoe polish daubed on. But that required a razor blade to remove.
Ken
I have one of those paper shredders that make the long strips, and I am fighting a sudden urge to feed it a roll of aluminum foil and see if tinsel comes out.
(Fighting, because it seems more likely I’d end up buying a new shredder.)
Higgs Boson's Mate
@c u n d gulag:
Soupy! White Fang! Black Tooth! Pookie!
c u n d gulag
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I LOOOOOOVED me some Soup-man!
I mourned the day he died a few years ago.
Jewish Steel
!גליקלעך חנוכּה
Whadya get me?
PurpleGirl
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Thinking about it now, I’m amazed my parents bought me the official kit. They usually didn’t buy me and my brother stuff we’d seen on TV and said we wanted. But I know I had the green screen.
Schlemizel
@Schlemizel:
That was the stuff we used & it was not an aerosol at all. It was a liquid glass cleaner you put on with a sponge. It was sort of bluish until it dried and then turned white.
All the shit that is floating around inside, what I shall call for lack of a better term, my brain, surprises me. I wish there were a way to catalog it all & call it up as needed
MikeJ
@Jewish Steel:
Happy Chaka Khan.
joeyess
December 8, 1980.
John Lennon had been shot.
I do this every December 8th….. I awake to the sad fact that this is the day that the man I perceived to be the very consciousness of music and art was gunned down.
In what was a bloody 17 years preceding this event, starting with JFK, Malcom, Martin, Bobby…… all of whom were transcendent political figures but nebulous figures to the mind a child. As it turned out, those years and those violent deaths, for me, were an introduction to Cynicism 101.
You see, I wasn’t quite able to truly understand the senseless violence that had occurred in those years leading up to this one.
However, when John was killed, I recognized something. Something similar. The killing had an eerie resemblance to the famous violent deaths that I had grown up with. I tried to make sense of it. Tried to cry out the rage. Tried to chalk it up to ‘the way of the world’. But that never seemed enough. It still doesn’t. I now believe that John Lennon’s murder was the last American political assassination of the 20th century.
Every year at this time, as the days grow unbearably short and the sunlight slips away with impersonal ease, just as the years have since slipped away….. I look back and wish we had done better. In many ways we have accomplished astonishing things. In many ways we haven’t come far at all.
Goodbye once again, Mr. Lennon.
I miss you.
Schlemizel
@c u n d gulag:
Me too – the guy was funny & original & I didn’t feel like he was talking to me like a child. What a great show he had. I don’t think there has been anything close other than Pee Wee Herman.
Jewish Steel
@MikeJ:
Genghis’s much pleasanter sister. Mazel Tov!
General Stuck
I’m starting to believe some Obot operative has planted Manchurian dem implants where McConnell’s chin should be.
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/12/08/senate_plans_bipartisan_screening_of_lincoln.html
Now we can check on what southern wingnut senators have schedule conflicts and won’t be attending. Brilliant, Mitch !!
PS – Spoiler alert. The south loses the civil war.
Schlemizel
@General Stuck:
Not sure about the South losing the Civil War. Certainly when the shooting stopped they were on the short end of the stick but in the 150 years since they appear to be making a solid comeback and today even own an entire political party that has the majority in one House and got 47% of the vote in the Presidential election.
General Stuck
@Schlemizel:
I think that is called losing the war, but winning the peace.
WereBear
@joeyess: I used to wonder why the “other side” so rarely got treated that way, until I realized “we” don’t think it’s acceptable to kill people we disagree with.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Reading Terminal Market.
joeyess
@WereBear: Good point.
NotMax
Soupy was a true pioneer who deserves a prominent place in the pantheon of early TV performers.
Uncle Floyd, for those fortunate enough to live in an area where it aired.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
They’ll lose the sequel, too.
This time, though, we won’t be as humane as William Tecumseh Sherman was.
Hungry Joe
About 20 years ago I interviewed Soupy (it was a phoner, unfortunately) and it was all I could do to take notes, I was laughing so hard. The whole time. He fired off one corny joke after another, always about 1/10 of second before I saw it coming, which made it even funnier.
suzanne
We are having a birthday party this evening for my about-to-be-nine-year-old. She’s been having a hard time with a girl bullying her this year. The little fuckhead found out she wasn’t invited, so firs she asked if she could be my daughter’s friend again. When my kid said no, she asked directly if she could come to the party. When told NO again, she started planning playdates at the same time as the party and inviting my daughter’s friends, trying to make it less fun for my kid.
I know I’m a bad person, but I want to punch the little asshole in the face.
PurpleGirl
Just remembered a greeting card I used to tape to my apartment door:
Cover image: a funny looking man dancing around holding a bottle (of wine?) and wearing a Menorah on his head. Text: Happy Hanukkah
Inside text: Eat, Drink and Be Merry but remember it’s the candles that get lit, not you.
The things that come out from the recesses of your mind…
PurpleGirl
@suzanne: That is horrible and I’d want to punch out the little snot too. It does not make you a bad person, it makes you a mother that feels and understands her child’s pain.
Hope your daughter has a great party tonight.
Josie
@suzanne: Figure out what is the latest super duper activity that nine year old girls would die to participate in, make it happen and pass the word around to everyone who is invited. It will make them want to come and will make the little meanie green with envy. Even if it costs extra money, it would be worth it. Yes, I am an underhanded plotter, why do you ask?
the Conster
@suzanne:
I raised two girls, and OMG the drama. My rule was that they could only have one friend over at a time, because WITHOUT FAIL, two would end up against one. I used to envy moms who had boys, because they’d punch each other, and then just go right back to blowing shit up or whatever, like nothing ever happened. Girls are psychological warfare experts who just fuck with each other’s heads.
Amanda in the South Bay
I don’t get the modern love affair with Hannukah that pagans and secularists have (the same people who bash Christianity).
Hannukah us all about the victory of strict Jewish monotheism over Hellenistic syncretism. Granted that aspect has been toned down for a while, but you can’t deny it. Meh, but then im not a new age pagan devotee of non Christian world religions.
Ben Franklin
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/law-science-and-the-coming-brawl-over-marijuana/265144/
But there is another conflict here that’s been splayed open by the ballot initiatives, one which is more fundamental to the future of lawful marijuana use than any argument the feds will now use to stop the state initiatives. It’s the ongoing conflict over the science of marijuana, over the quality of proof of its medicinal values, which is central to the coming court fights. Until the Drug Enforcement Administration changes its marijuana classification, until lawmakers recognize its therapeutic uses, reformers like those in Colorado and Washington will be crushed in court.
The federal policy choice on marijuana’s classification is the horse. The Justice Department’s coming use of that policy against the states is the cart. And that’s why the timing of the state initiatives is so compelling. Just last month, a few weeks before the election, a panel of three federal judges in Washington, D.C., heard oral arguments in a case on this very point called Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. The feds say that studies of the virtues of medical marijuana are not rigorous enough to warrant a change in DEA policy. The reformers say there is enough proof, and testimony, to justify the change.
Not enough evidence for the virtues…….but enough evidence of Chemical weapons in Syria.
Maybe NORML should enlist our intelligence services to declare there is classified evidence and those interested can request redacted docs through FOIA.
scav
@the Conster: reminds me of a post sleep-over 8-year-olds birthday report. Great sighs of relief were heard from the male celebrant when the girls left as now things would be quieter. (extra giggleishishiness because the boy in question is one of the most gifted males I’ve seen at the social reading and manipulation games, bar none).
ruemara
I adore Christmas. I hate Christmas music and I have to agree with cundgulag about the benefits of Hannukah not being commercialized.
Bruuuuce
Happy Chanukkah, and may all your latkes be free of knuckle-blood!
the Conster
@lamh35:
My husband has hundreds of Christmas songs. He collects them from every source and starts playing them as soon as he can. When it comes to Christmas, we’re like Jack Spratt and his wife. I’d rather be at the dentist (if they’re not playing Christmas songs too) then hear songs about this time of the year. I do love The Messiah, however, which I put on when no one’s home, at a level just below which your ears would bleed.
Yutsano
!!חנוכה שמח
suzanne
@Josie: HA. That’s exactly what we did. This party is an exorbitant amount of money, because it’s at a place that is filled with a huge inflatable playland. I’m hoping that they are all tired afterward.
@the Conster: OH MY GOD. Yanno, that sort of brinksmanship is not my style and my kid doesn’t either, but some of her classmates are such little fuckheads. The drama this year has been really upsetting. Many tears. And quite a few bruises.
the Conster
@suzanne:
If you’ve ever read Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, well, it’s to mean girls what Handmaid’s Tale is to religious fundamentalism.
Josie
@suzanne: Good for you. I hope a wonderful time is had by all, especially your daughter.
c u n d gulag
@efgoldman:
To quote the great Chico Marx, “Ah, you can-a fool me – there’s no such thing as a ‘Sanity Claus!”
And what brand of pastrami is it? The Boarshead brand is way too dry for me?
FSM, I miss the old 2nd Avenue Deli! It blew away Katz’s, the Stage, Cargnegie, and Wolfe’s. They had THE best fatty pastrami in the known universe!
The place was run-down, but the food was to die for. Their matzoh-ball soup was great, too. The ball was only slightly smaller than a basketball. But I exaggerate – ok, so it was about the size of a softball.
Hungry Joe
The late (*sigh*) Soupy Sales was Jewish — born Milton Supman. Wherever he is, he’s probably being hit in the face with a latke. Happy Hanukkah, Soupy!
PurpleGirl
@c u n d gulag: Do you remember an eatery on 8th St that had deli fare? I can’t remember the name. It closed sometime around 1973, I think. To my mind they had great pastrami.
c u n d gulag
@PurpleGirl:
I think I know the place you’re talking about, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the name of it. It was between 1st and 2nd Ave, or 2nd and Bowery, wasn’t it?
It was an old dive, but we used to go in there after we’d gone shopping for Russian/Ukrainian food like kielbasa and other cold cuts and cheeses along 1st and 2nd Ave. It didn’t have a big menu, just kosher meats, soups, and pickled cuke’s and green tomato’s. And, if I’m thinking of the same place, on top of that great fatty pastrami, they had great goulash, too – on homemade egg noodles.
And Houston had some great shops, like Russ and Daughters for smoked and pickled fish (it’s still there, too!), and there was another store just for cheese, and still another one just for pickles – they had these great ancient barrels you’d open up, and take some old wooden tongs, and pick out the pickle of your choice. You’d eat it standing right there, the juice dripping down your hands and face – and sometimes the man didn’t even charge us for doing that. He’d look at my Mom, and wink. I think it was because we spoke his language.
And all of the old stores used to give you a sample or slice of everything before you bought, so, you’d almost be full by the time you left their store.
Can you imagine stores doing that now?
The “shareholders” would shoot the counterperson on sight!
Oh, good times, good times…
We’ve morphed into a much colder and cheaper society.
TerryC
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Still works well, with dry erase markers. Laptop and iPad screens, too.
priscianusjr
Nothing says “Chanukah” more than a bunch of sexy Korean girls dancing to Kpop.