Happy Chanukah

Or Hanukkah or something like that.

Why do you get a present each night?

For the same reason that people line up outside Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. There aren’t any set rules for gift-giving. But how can you not do something everyone else is doing? When it comes to commerce, Chanukah has been absorbed into the larger Christmas gift parade.

It wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time, children might get a few coins during Chanukah. I have a book about Jewish holidays published in 1938, which put it this way: “The children eat pancakes and count their coins, and consider themselves fortunate.”