Does anyone in Seattle have a light?
I could have ordered Hanukkah candles online, like my mom suggested, but to spite local resident Jeff Bezos and in the spirit of human connection, I decided to go to a store, make awkward small talk with a cashier, bring home my prize and complain about the tiny Hanukkah section to my wife. The perfect errand. Easy. I headed to Safeway, which I knew had a very small Kosher food section as I’d bought last minute ingredients there for the Rosh Hashanah dinner my friend hosted. I walked past the bright shelves full of LED Christmas lights, holiday chocolates shaped like reindeer, even past cinnamon and pine scented “winter holiday” themed candles (a promising sign!) and then down a rear aisle, past other “International Cuisine,” until I reached the Manischewitz section. I scanned past the matzah perched next to jars of gefilte fish and bags of egg noodles, and then I saw it: a box of candles. Shabbat candles. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be so simple.
At my friend’s Rosh Hashanah gathering, sitting around her table sharing food and laughter, I felt filled with the same joy I experienced while spending nights of oily latke assembly line production and contentious dreidel with my parents and their friends. I’d left that behind when I moved cross country, and while last year I traveled home to continue the tradition, this year I couldn’t make it back for any feats of strength or airing of grievances or that moment of thoughtful shared silence during the menorah lighting.
Impulsively, I’d decided to host a Hanukkah party on New Year’s Day and recreate the tradition in my new home.
Which meant I needed Hanukkah candles.
I tried Trader Joe’s next, crossing my fingers, assuming they would have a cheap box of candles branded with perhaps a semi-offensive caricature of a rabbi called something like Trader Moses’ Eight Nights of Fire, but no luck. I left with a few boxes of frozen latkes (look, making them is so messy and so much work and I’m sooo lazy) plus a bag or three of gelt, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
As I took the bus to QFC, which had Christmas lights and a good sale on red and green M&Ms but not even full-priced candles, the doubt started to creep in. Was it really worth going to all this trouble? I’m not exactly the most Jewish Jew. My family traditions in December are a Chrismukkah grab bag of a secular Lithuanian Jewish mom and a secular Scandinavian Lutheran dad, both of whom had left formal religion as young adults. My wife is a lapsed Protestant. Our partner, another queer southern Jewish transplant, didn’t grow up attending synagogue or celebrating holidays either. But maybe that’s why this felt so important. I wanted more than to have everyone over for latkes, some kvetching, dreidel and to watch reruns of “Seinfeld.” I wanted us to light candles together in a dim room and spend a moment of silent reflection together. I wanted to create a new tradition in a new city in a new state with new partners and friends, something meaningful, and that was worth a bit of stress. And that’s why I needed to find some damn candles.
Resigned, I slunk across the street to Whole Foods, prepared to overpay for a bundle of organic free-range candles and make Jeff Bezos even richer, but to my relief they were sold out.
“Grocery stores in Seattle are antisemitic,” I texted my wife.
I expanded my search to specialty stores in Capitol Hill. I struck out at Retrofit Homes despite it being THE go-to place for candles. I tried Pacific Hardware, which had Christmas lights and lovely poinsettias and 500 types of screws and zero types of Hanukkah candle. I called my wife and asked her to stop by WinCo, wasting her time, because there were no 50-gallon tubs full of candles to scoop (WinCo are you listening?).
In desperation I tried Metropolitan Market, an upscale grocery store in a different part of town best known, in my expert opinion, for having a good carrot cake for the price. Despite their rows of candles and Christmas lights and the holiday cards spilling from the shelves, and the carrot cake, which I did buy, there were no Hanukkah candles.
But then, a Chrismukkah miracle: My partner called to tell me they’d found candles. But the specialty craft store they’d purchased them from sold Hanukkah candles as loosies like a street corner cigarette hustler, and they’d only managed to snag eight total.
At this point I did what any self-respecting Jew who makes it to synagogue almost once a year would: I gave up and went home and ate a slice of carrot cake.
A week later, after many more dead ends, I found myself at Target. In Issaquah. Which did have candles. I didn’t even check the price.
Is this an inauspicious beginning for what I hope becomes a yearly addition to my eclectic smorgasbord of traditions? I don’t think so. I think it’s fitting. I was willing to walk and bus and drive miles to tens of stores for something I could have easily ordered online, not just because I’m stubborn, but because I want to be connected to where I now live, to ground myself, to tie my life to others, to share and experience something that bridges us to the past, to those we care about who have cared about us and have passed along traditions, to share a tradition that can form a support column for a bridge into the future.
Soon I’ll host my New Year’s Day Chrismukkah gathering with the Jews, ex-Mormons and other assorted goys and gays I surround myself with, and I can’t wait to tell my parents about the shenanigans. I think the appeal of spirituality and religion to me, despite being secular, has always been the comfort of shared experience. A repetition of a tradition is never static; it is recreated every time people gather for it. The act of shared creation isn’t a solution, but it is a necessity. My parents won’t be around to celebrate Chrismukkah forever. It’s hard this year to not celebrate with them, and to know that at some point that will become permanent. By recreating my deeply cherished childhood traditions, the chaotic and jumbled secular mess they are, and sharing this piece of myself with others, I’m sharing a piece of my parents with them too. I believe that small acts of creation can heal, even if incompletely. Recreation ties me to the past, but it is not the past. The next act of recreation will always shift and evolve and change.
For example, next year, when I host Chrismukkah, I am also going to order candles online.
