How to Have a Super-Traditional Hanukkah That Is in NO Way Like Christmas

Night 1: Time for a latke and jelly donut feast! To add a bit of ambiance, string twinkle lights around your living room. Teach your kids that each light represents a night that the oil miraculously lasted, plus a bunch of other nights.

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Night 2: The story about the oil really seemed to sink in! To keep the teachable moments going, dig out your novelty dreidel socks. Gamely try to explain the origins of the game, but find yourself on a tangent about the etymology of the word “Maccabee.” To bring everyone back, hang the socks by the mantleplace and stuff them with gelt, a traditional gift for children, and definitely not something your kids will later use to barter their way out of Hebrew school.

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Night 3: Have the kids make dreidel cookies. It’s so hard to shape the bottom part. Is it weird that they all look like crosses? Maybe if you pipe icing on them to look like Hebrew letters? Which weirdly are also coming out looking like crosses.

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Night 4: Since you forgot to clean the wax out of your menorah last year, just buy eight scented votive candles and position them around a small wreath you rescued from your neighbor’s trash. Marvel at the flickering lights while inhaling the aroma of sugarplum, which reminds you of the sufganiyot you were supposed to pick up from Zabars on the way home.

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Night 5: Purchase a small holly bush from Stew Leonard’s in your kids’ names. Display your new “Hanukkah Bush” in the living room. Put a Star of David on top. Ta-da!

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Night 6: The kids complained that the Hanukkah Bush is too small. Race around your backyard trying to find something larger–oh look! It’s the evergreen that’s been growing outside your den for the past three decades. Hack it down, prop it up in your bay window, and emblazon it with enough twinkling Hanukkah miracles that it glows radioactively. It is the Festival of Lights, after all.

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Night 7: Realize you haven’t had a chance to give the kids their Hanukkah gifts yet. Lay them all out under the decked-out Hanukkah Tree so they’ll see it when they wake up. Throw a few logs on the fire, and leave out a plate of dreidel/cross cookies and milk in case someone gets the midnight munchies.

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Night 8: Whew, this has been quite the marathon, considering Hanukkah’s a pretty minor holiday! To conclude the festivities, do you wake the kids from their post-gift-opening slumber to go traipsing around the neighborhood singing the Dreidel Song on loop? Or let them play with their new toys while you steal off to quaff some mulled Manischewitz? Consider WWJMD: What Would Judah Maccabee Do?