Kreesmas Lights in Our Succah
Every Succot, we decorate our succah with these little colorful lights that growing up we–Josh as the son of a Catholic mother, and I as a student at a Christian prep-school–knew as Christmas lights.
When Josh and I came to Israel over 30 years ago, we found it very entertaining that the Israelis selling these lights only knew them as “Lights for the Succah.”
But then this year, it happened. Josh went to buy “Lights for the Succah” and the Israeli seller said, “Ah, you want Kreesmas Lights?”
So this Shabbat, when my daughter’s Israeli friend pointed at the blinking lights, I told her, “These are called Kreesmas Lights.”
“Kreesmas? What’s Kreesmas?”
So I translated for her, telling her the Hebrew word for Christmas: Chag HaMolad.
The friend then laughed and said, “You already have the lights, so you are all ready for Kreesmas. The only thing you’re missing is a pumpkin!”
What’s even funnier is that today, when I told over this story to my daughter who’d been away for Shabbat, she responded to the story’s punch line with a blank look.
My daughter’s an Israeli as well as an American. But she’s grown up so differently than we did. Not only in a different country. But on a different planet, where Kreesmas lights don’t adorn trees or houses, but rather shine forth from countless succahs, as Jews across the globe eat and sing and sleep under the stars in the loving embrace of the Holy One.
I knew my children were really Israeli around Pesach time this year when my 12-year-old daughter noticed an email from an American friend wishing me a “Happy Passover.” She looked at me, bewildered, and asked, “What’s Passover?”