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Holiday Stories and Traditions
Is there really a Santa Claus? Today, Santa Claus still brings toys and gifts to good little boys and girls around the world. Sometimes children have doubts about Santa Claus and wonder if he is real. One little 8 year old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon decided the way to find out if there really was a Santa Claus was to ask the best source she could find - the New York Sun newspaper. Virginia wrote a letter to the New York Sun newspaper in 1897. Virginia’s letter and response are shown below written by the Sun editor, Francis P. Church. Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
Originally published in The New York Sun in 1897.
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e take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun: Dear Editor: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Signed Virginia O’Hanlon The answer as published in the New York Sun was: Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
HANUKKAH GIFT GIVING
or Jewish people around the world, Hanukkah is marked by lighting candles on the menorah for eight nights, eating latkes, and spinning the dreidel. But when the holiday starts — on the evening of Dec. 10 this year — many Jewish Americans will be focused on a different tradition: gift-giving.
In that, gift-giving on Hanukkah is not unlike gift-giving on Christmas — it has little, if anything, to do with the religious requirements of the celebration.
The story of Hanukkah — which, in its varying versions, celebrates the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem around 200 B.C., and how a small amount of oil miraculously lasted for eight nights — is not told in the Hebrew Bible, but is instead found in the first and second Books of Maccabees. This makes Hanukkah less important religiously than other holidays like Passover, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Those festivals technically call for at least one day of rest, similar to the weekly Sabbath. On Hanukkah, however, no such rest is necessary.
WHAT SOME PARENTS DO TODAY
Today, some families prefer to give Hanukkah money rather than gifts because they view gelt as a more authentically Jewish tradition. Minka Goldstein, a mother of six, says she gives one dollar per candle, not counting the shamash (the “helper” candle used to light the other ones). On the first night her kids receive one dollar; second night, two, etc. The total is $36 for eight nights, and she says her children (and now grandchildren too) love it.
Goldstein uses this as an opportunity to teach her kids how to spend wisely. When they were little, she took her kids to Toys R Us and let them decide what to buy with their $36.
FROM GELT TO GIFTS
Dianne C. Ashton, Director of American Studies at Rowan University and author of Hanukkah in America: A History, explains that the trend of exchanging Hanukkah gifts really took off in the 1950s. At this time, Jewish child psychologists as well as rabbis started promoting gifts as a way to make post-Holocaust Jewish kids happy to be Jewish, rather than sad about missing out on Christmas.
Christmas envy remains a concern for many Jewish parents today. Janet Zuckerman, a mother of three, says it is particularly hard for her kids this time of year because their cousins celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas and receive presents for both.
MAKING IT MEANINGFUL
Like Zuckerman, most parents do give some gifts for Hanukkah. Though gifts might make Hanukkah seem like a “Jewish Christmas,” there can be value in taking time to select a thoughtful and tasteful gift for a child you love. And there is undeniable pleasure in seeing children excited to play with new toys — especially when those toys are helping them learn and develop new skills.
Rabbi Sandy Rubenstein, director of Jewish Chaplaincy Services at the Jewish Social Service Agency in Rockville, Maryland, offers some advice for families that want to give gifts, but also want to avoid excessive materialism. She suggests that families can light candles to honor justice or peace, or talk about what brings light into one?s life or what places in this world need more light. Even with gift giving, family holiday celebrations can still aim to foster social consciousness.
One parent doing just that is Jill Myers, a mother of two. Growing up, she received a gift every night of Hanukkah. But when she got married, her South African husband found the custom totally foreign: “He was like, ‘What are you talking about, gifts?’”
When Myers’ kids do receive Hanukkah gifts, she has them look through their toys and determine what they no longer play with and can, thus, donate. Also, at winter break of each year, her children decide where to give whatever is in their home tzedakah (charity) box.
Myers says, “They don’t always see the tzedakah we give so those are two things I’ve tried to balance with gifts. Some years they might get something every night but one night it was from us, one night from our parents, and other nights a book from the book fair.”
STICK WITH SMALL STUFF
Like Myers, you can consider letting other relatives and friends cover most of the eight nights. For your gifts, you can choose to give more modestly. Myers says she feels comfortable giving her kids small gifts like books. This year her children looked at catalogues and picked out board games to play as a family. “We try to keep down on the electronics and try to make it about family – -not a Christmas-like bounty of stuff.”
Your children may be surprised to learn that the custom of gift-giving is largely American. Beatriz Yanovich and her husband came to the United States from Colombia. Her three children grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Yanovich says, “Growing up for my husband and me, as well as for our children, Hanukkah was time for latkes, sufganiyot, gelt, and lighting candles. One unforgettable year one child expected a present every night so I gave one sock one night and then the other the next night, laughing all day about it.”
Yanovich’s main piece of advice for parents: “We should not compete with Christmas.”
