Holidays were always fun growing up.  I guess because  I really celebrated holiday"S" plural!  We'd celebrate both Chanukah (and Hanukah, as the non-Jewish community spells it) and Christmas.  To this day my dad wipes the dust off the menorah a few days before the first night of the festival of lights, and displays it in the living room of the house in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn for all to see.  Most of the bulbs don't light up anymore, but I guess he's too cheap to buy new ones. 

We'd always get to spin dreidel for gelt (Yiddish for money), which is always cool.  In case you guys don't know how to play dreidel, here's an overview:

1. All players get an equal amount of pennies, chocolate coins (gelt), candies, raisins, or tokens (my Dad plays with post it notes that each represent $5 - he's a retired teacher and took his helping of office supplies from the school).
2. All players put one token in the pot in the center.
3. The dreidel is a four sided spinning top with a different Hebrew letter on each side. Players take turns spinning the dreidel.
4. The player acts according to the letter which is facing up when the dreidel stops spinning.
5. The image above with the Hebrew letters is the game key; it shows which Hebrew letter symbolizes which move in the game. Nun means the player does nothing. Gimel means the player takes all the tokens from the pot. Hay means the player takes half of the tokens from the pot. Shin (or Pay in Israel) means the player puts one token into the pot.

It's pretty fun...

I never really knew what Chanukah stood for (other than dreidel and potato latkes/potato pancakes that my mom would cook) or what it represented until recently. But growing up, we'd have to prove our Jewishness to my Dad who holds the religion pretty sacred.  I think it still satisfies him to see that our Jewish tradition is kept alive.

So after the dreidel it was off to WASHINGTON HEIGHTS!  Mom would grab my bro sis and I (Dad always stayed home) and head to upper Manhattan to party with the Dominicans.  First stop, my mom's step-mother, Abuela Tona's apartment.

Abuela Tona (RIP) was as devout Catholic as they come.  She turned her entire living room into a nativity scene for noche buena, and every year the manger would grow bigger and bigger with more mini animal figurines.  At one point the scene expanded so much that the entrance to the living room was only wide enough for one person to go through at a time. My brother and I used to guess every year what she would add...I swear I saw a fake 7-11 storefront next to the manger one year.  Anyway, you'd have the baby Jesus, Mary and the rest of the crew, alongside floating ducks on a faux pond, cows, village people, a water well, etc...and once midnight came, she'd dim the house lights and start the show where she'd present all her new Avon figurines she got as free gifts that she so eloquently placed in the scene next to Jesus.  This was the point  where my Abuelo Maximo (RIP) would head to the store to get some more "soda".  Yet he always came back with Barcelo on his breath and a full coat of Jean Nate around the neck area to cover the stench.

After that we climbed higher up the St. Nicholas Avenue path to 193^rdstreet to visit Tia Clara (RIP).  Boy do I miss her Dominican cake with the guyaba and little pellets on top.  I always thought they were BBs, like the ammunition you use for a BB gun, but they sure tasted good.  I always used to ponder why the music got louder the higher the street numbers on St. Nicholas Avenue.... Anyway, the apartment door was ALWAYS open, and the small 2 bedroom apt filled with darker and strange faces that always greeted me by "gordita" (my mom used to always tell me, "don't worry, that's a compliment") while dancing to Johnny Ventura, Jose Feliciano, etc...it was good to see my mom let loose at Tia Clara's.  They used to laugh and laugh at the silliest things.  Back to the gordita thing for a sec...now that I'm older, I kinda wish she would have told me the truth, maybe I wouldn't be so accepting of my thickness to-date?  Who knows....so the mini Budweiser cans would be passed around in the apartment while the cousins and I would played with the stray cats in the hallway of the building. Then we would open presents.  And I ALWAYS got the same looking bootleg doll as a gift.  She came with a plastic stroller, her eyes were made of this hard cheap plastic and she never had hair that a little girl like me could comb. When the party died down I remember the TV would go on and Rambo would follow.  I never understood why they'd show Rambo every friggin Christmas.

After that, it was around 3 AM and  back to Sheepshead Bay we went.  The car ride home was a bit more tranquil.  I guess it was a time for us to reflect on the experience, and as I recall now, I couldn't have asked for a better way to be brought up.  Being bicultural and having the ability to live through two VERY different cultures has helped me become the diverse and open-minded woman I am today.