Seems a very fortuitous time for something from 2016--the song at the end is a gem:
Hanumas. No, it’s not a yoga asana. Or the name of a jewelry store. Or a stop on the Tokyo Metro.
It’s a holiday. I don’t pretend that we invented it,-- my Binghamton University college room-mate and I--only that we reveled in it.
At the time, neither one of us was religiously observant. But we were deeply attuned to the power of ritual. And we had developed some of our own--some pretty kooky--but marvelous.
Such as when we lived in a duplex apartment in Binghamton whose address was actually 42-and-a 1/4 Chestnut Street where the bathtub was so short that even I couldn’t lie down in it--and I’m short.
Still, I would wedge myself into a bath and Diana would come in and read me poetry. T.S. Eliot--no, not “The Love-song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The cats stuff. And A.A. Milne. I can still hear her reading me King John’s Christmas:
King John was not a good man, And no good friends had he. He stayed in every afternoon... But no one came to tea. And, round about December, The cards upon his shelf Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer, And fortune in the coming year, Were never from his near and dear, But only from himself.
When we graduated and moved to New York, we found a spot for our regular Sunday brunches. (It's still there: Green Kitchen, 78th and 1st, still a decent, affordable brunch.)
We also got a family membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And we actually left the apartment together each morning in a mad dash to catch the Third Avenue bus (and it was always so damn cold) that took us somewhat close to our jobs near Rockefeller Center.
But when the holiday season drew near, we made a bold decision. Since we had slightly more discretionary money than in our Binghamton days, we decided to splurge and buy a Christmas tree.
So it was an exotic hike up to 86th Street to buy a tree we could afford and to haul it back to 79th Street and our postage-stamp-sized apartment.
I don’t remember buying the lights for it. But I remember that it did have lights. Diana remembers Christmas carols. I remember her teaching me the Dreidel Song.
More than that, I remember her making the latkes.
I’d never had a latke. I’d had knishes and kugels and blintzes and bialys, all of which seemed marvelously fattening, tasty and unhealthy. But I’d never had the likes of a latke—the shredded potatoes bound together with eggs, then fried to a golden crispness and topped with sour cream. (Applesauce, meh!)
So we sat in front of our tree and ate our latkes and had what was, for each of us, our first Hanumas, as well as our first Hanukkah and Christmas observance that was distinct from our families—and truly our own.
*** *** ***
Life moves on. Within a year or so Diana left New York. I left New York. We kept in contact, but sporadically. Eventually she moved to Seattle and became a columnist for a newsweekly that reports on religious and cultural aspects of the Jewish community. And I became a Lutheran pastor, who still makes latkes (most years) when putting up the Christmas tree.
This sounds like a sentimental story—and it is. But it’s also a case of heart and hope trumping dogmatic differences (though for Diana and me, that Hanumas wasn’t about differences of any kind at all, but rather the shared faith in ritual to bind people together).
*** *** ***
Enter Facebook.
It was through Facebook that I reconnected with some friends I’d lost touch with—and lost touch with mostly because we move and morph and change. We stop sending holiday cards. And then we lose each others’ email addresses.
Diana and I have picked up a conversation that never stopped, but just went silent for a while. And it’s been through our recent exchanges that I’ve fully remembered the power of that first Hanumas to filter down through the intervening years:
Like how, when my daughter Linnea was four and totally revved from putting up the Christmas tree, she sat down to eat her first-ever latkes. Then raised her head from her plate to say, a transfixed glow on her face, “Latkes are my future!”
Like how, on Christmas Eve, the last song I always listen to is a Hebrew song about Hanukkah, Maoz Tzur, with a trumpet descant that always makes me cry. These are the lyrics:
Light in darkness let us sing,
Brightness now returning,
House of prayer once dark and cold
Now with candles burning.
When the lamp seemed empty,
And its fire forever spent,
Then the flame sprang up anew,
For our hearts’ deep yearning.
--Lawrence Rosenwald
I suppose I’m not at all sure if the eight lights of Hanukkah and the star of Bethlehem are really any different at all—illumination being both their hope and their aim, the fulfillment of our hearts’ deep yearning.