We're all for, "Let there be light," but at Chanukah how much wattage is OK?Putting Chanukah lights on my home has been a real holiday experiment. It was one thing to blog about (As I did recently) decorating the exterior of your house for Chanukah, but quite another, I discovered, to go ahead and actually light up.
Hours before Chanukah, as I stuck the metal stakes into the front yard lawn to support the sets of dreidel lights that we bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond, I felt that I had gone beyond as well. Was I merely copying my Christian neighbors? Was this electrically treifing up my holiday? Why couldn't I just stick a menorah in the window like everyone else?
When two neighbors, who walking by saw me finishing the installation, (which by then included a four foot high dreidel lit with a rope light), wished me a "Happy Chanukah," I thought, "That wouldn't have happened otherwise."When another neighbor who came by to deliver some home baked Christmas cookies, said "More power to you,'" I smiled and told her that I had enjoyed seeing her house lit up as well.
The first night of Chanukah is always a high, but this year, like a child, I waited with anticipation for the sun to go down so I could plug in, and start electrically proclaiming the miracle. The Hebrew letters, which stand for "Nes gadol hiyah sham,' "A great miracle happened there," were now planted in my front yard, and it was a miracle"here" of sorts that I had overcome my own reticence about publicizing the holiday in this way.
"Your lights look great" said Uncle Joe who had came over for a Chanukah dinner.
There were, however, some unanticipated messages in the lights. All those years of driving by my neighbor's Christmas displays, I never really had gotten it: when you put the stuff out on the front lawn, you want it to look good. You want it to represent how you feel about your holiday; which is a great expectation from a string of little bulbs.
I also realized something that even after a lifetime of Christmas light displays drivebys, I never understood: if someone parks their car in front of your display, then there goes the miracle.
I also have a new appreciation of extension chords.
As for the household reaction to the Chanukah yard display? From my three adult sons, I received a mixed review.
"I am opposed to any public display of religion," said my youngest. "I was never jealous of someone else's decorated house, I am just uncomfortable with it," he explained.
"What you don't want," the second son who likes the lights jokingly warned, "is to be first recorded case of a fire started by a light up dreidel," he said.
"Just don't overdo it," advised the third.
My wife Brenda gave her opinion too. "The lights don't make me feel like it's Christmas," she said one Chanukah night as we walked up our driveway. "The lights seem festive," she added. "Especially when the days are shorter and the nights longer."
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah forJTA, Jewishlove music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for theLosAngeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween maskfor theForward, and what really gets stuck in the LaBreaTarPits for the LosAngeles Times. He has edited several Jewishpopulationstudies,and isone of the founders of the MovableMinyan, an overtwenty-year-old chavura-size, independentcongregation. He oncedesigned a pop-upsederplate.In2011 Rodman received aFirst Place SimonRockowerAward for"Excellence in Feature Writing"from the AmericanJewish Press Association."
