I did celebrate Hanukkah for the first time this year, and it has given an extra nice touch to December. I have found out quite a bit more details about the Hanukkah story than I used to know. Hanukkah does has possible LDS applications (to our own LDS history). I plan to celebrate Hanukkah next year again.

We’ve eschewed many traditional secular Christmas traditions (just wish I could kick out old Santa Claus) for more of a focus on the meaning of Christmas. On our own (we’d never heard of anyone else doing this) we began on Christmas Eve having the family dress as if they would if we’d lived in Bethlehem when Christ was born. We light the house only with oil lamps and we eat the food that they may have eaten then in Bethlehem. Then, by lamp light, we read Luke’s description of Christ’s birth.

To our suprise, this year our Ward Christmas Party has tossed old Santa out on his jolly elf ear and they’re having a “Night in Bethlehem” which is nearly identical – but on a Ward level – to the tradition we started years ago.

I think that all of these observances are useful in focusing our family on our true biblical and spritual heritage and away from worldly things.

Thanks for posting this as it gives me more reason to go with my desire to recognize Hanukkah in our home.

The story of the Macabees is pretty interesting, and showed God’s hand in thier preservation. Light up the Minorah, and give a big thank you to your Jewish Friends.

It happened maybe four or five years ago. A young woman lived with us at the time who came from a ploygamous family. Her father was interested in most things Hebrew or Jewish, so my wife organized a passover seder.

We integrated it with Mormon thought to the point that I presided, but my wife conducted. It was still one of the oddest things I have ever witnessed, with almost forty people crammed into our apartment: me, my wife, our roommates father and his three wives, their twenty five or so children, plus some children-in-laws and grandchildren. And reading Hebrew, inviting Elijah to join us, passing around the seder plate, the whole thing.

We’ve tried Haunakkah several times, but we’re not organized enough to light candles for eight days in a row. Still, we do have a family menorah, probably the only family in our ward that can say that.

Joseph Smith and Christmas is a bit off topic here, so I’ll save the details for another time. Last year I got called at the last minute to give a talk, so I looked up all the references from History of the Church. There are enough that it seemed clear to me that the prophet was celebrating Christmas in Nauvoo.

I think you’re right … Purim is the one day that (arguably) Jews are encouraged to get drunk. However, I haven’t seen this practiced so I have no idea whether its really practiced all that much.

The story is this:

I had a particular evening in mind for my wife and I to get engaged. Around the same time I read a newspaper article about a large number of Torah scrolls that had been preserved during the Holocaust. The Germans had collected these scrolls with the purpose of creating a museum to “an extinct people.” After the war a Jewish foundation took charge of these scrolls and determined that synagogues around the world could apply for ownership of a scroll (one per synagogue of course). A Reform synagogue in Park City had applied for one of these Torah scrolls and received it.

Honestly, I thought it was fabulous that a synagogue in Utah had one of these scrolls and I wanted to see it.

So I called the rabbi there and asked him if it would be ok for my fiance-to-be and I to come see this sacred historical relic on a particular Saturday night. The rabbi said that would be fine and also added that this very same night the congregation was celebrating Purim. He invited us to attend and celebrate Purim with them. To me that was just too cool.

Purim is a holiday where kids dress up (like Halloween). Some of the kids dress up as Esther or Mordechai … but they also dress up as fairies, superheroes, etc. So when we arrived not only did we get to look at this scroll and read a little bit even of it … but we also were given the assignment to judge the costumes (since we were of course the most nonpartial observers in the room).

We had a very nice time.

After that I took Diane to a nice restaurant in Park City, ate dinner and then later that evening we got engaged.

Forgive me for sharing something that personal on this thread. But it’s a happy memory for me and hey, it involved a Jewish holiday too.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=urbanlegends&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Flearning%2Fgeneral%2Ffeatured_articles%2F001027friday.html

LOL

Reminds me of The Book of Mormon