We had our kids, their SOs, and their cousin from Southboro and his wife and kids over on Wednesday for a Hanukah party. Nothing remarkable, but a couple of pictures —
And here’s our old old hanukiah up in Casco on Friday, the eighth night —
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Are the candle colors traditional? Do they mean anything or is it just personal choice?
The colors are not traditional. In a Judaica shop you can get a set (enough for one Hanukah, which means 2 + 3 + … + 9 = 44 candles) of nice dipped white ones, or decorated blue ones, in a clear plastic box so you can see what you’re getting. In the kosher department of a supermarket you’re likely to find a cardboard box of candles with an assortment of colors and you have to take your chances. Children (and some adults) enjoy being creative about selecting the colors for any one night and arranging them. When I was a kid, Hanukah candles only came in orange.
In spite of the candles always being sold by sets of the right number, we always seem to have incomplete boxes left over from previous years — maybe one night people came over and we set up an extra Hanukiah (sometimes called ‘menorah’ but that properly refers to a 7-branched candlestick) or two for them to light, or maybe we were out late one evening and didn’t light the candles that day.
To me, this is what blogs are all about — realizing that things one person only has read about are things that someone else has grown up with and takes totally for granted.