SHANFIELD: The meaning of Hanukkah, or the Allston wooly mammoth

As most of you can see, it snowed last weekend. While those of you who are freshmen are running to the BU Beach and frolicking in the snowflakes, I’m here with snowshoes and a pickaxe trying to forge my way through Allston. Today, as I trekked the glacier that has become my favorite Rock City, I came across the body of a frat boy encased in ice alongside a perfectly frozen wooly mammoth. It’s no lie that God — along with Mayor Menino — hates Allston, but I’ll never understand why life has to be a walk through the ice ages in Allston every time it snows.

Besides the fact that Allston most definitely has a wooly mammoth problem, this is also my last column. I think I had a good run. I was one of two girl columnists, which is a step forward for girl power everywhere and for Hillary Clinton. I enjoyed getting feedback from readers, even though most of the fan mail I got was from angry CGS students who now struggle in the real world and from people soliciting me for casual sex — none of which I accepted. I don’t think the FreeP condones sexual encounters with columnists. Not columnists with other columnists, but just columnists, period. They have a really good harassment policy.

Regardless, my final column is now gracing this page, probably smushed into a tiny corner thanks to all the gambling Matt Negrin did to make the FreeP lose most of its money. This column is probably the last one I will ever write, ever. I’m really dramatic like that. It’s sad, I know — but it would just be too hard to go back. I also don’t think I could take another glamour shot like the one I had displayed every week to the left of my column.

With all of these depressing things happening — my last column, the Allston glacier and the finals I’ll probably do a mediocre job on — it’s Hanukkah on top of it all. Hanukkah, the world’s most door-prize holiday.

When I was in second grade, my class had a monthly newsletter. I was, of course, trying to find the most hard-hitting news, like the death of my sister’s hamster or the tiny earthquake California had that I was pretty sure was my own doing. On New Year’s Eve one year, my friend Grant and I asked the Ouija board what the sex of his unborn sibling would be, and we wrote an article about it. We got in a lot of trouble because Orange County’s public schools don’t condone witchcraft, but, guess what? That stupid board was right.

For the month of December, I decided to write an article about how Hanukkah was “not the Jewish Christmas.” I’d grown sick and tired of being the only Jew in the second grade and having to explain myself every time I ate a piece of gelt. I would later learn that I was one of three Jews in the entire conservative, red, cathedral-worshipping Orange County area, and the other two were my brother and sister.

The title of my article was “Hanukkah: Unfortunately, Not the Jewish Christmas.” It was an expose about the ignorance many have in thinking a Hanukkah bush stands in for the Christmas tree and Hanukkah Harry is just a replacement for Santa Claus. I also busted the myth that Jews were greedy for receiving eight days of presents, arguing that it’s better to get your presents all at once because anticipation is bad for your health. I offered no support or statistics, but I was probably right.

My article didn’t explain what Hanukkah actually was. I don’t think I knew. I still don’t know. I’m not sure anyone knows anything beyond what the Rugrats episode told us. From that, we can defer that there was a war between a bunch of babies and a really spoiled little Jewish girl. Sounds pretty accurate, considering I was that spoiled little Jewish girl once, and I could have started a war if I wanted to.

As I sat on Marsh Plaza yesterday watching my JDate matches light the shamash, I thought about the meaning of Hanukkah. This year, I won’t be home to light any candles with my family or eat latkes made from the boxed mix, so where do I get my meaning-of-Hanukkah fix? People are always talking about the damn meaning of Christmas. Seems to me the meaning of Christmas should be a birthday party, but according to Chevy Chase and Tim Allen movies, the meaning of Christmas is a warm and fuzzy feeling. According to Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman movies, the meaning of Hanukkah is trying too hard to be something that it isn’t.

I feel bad for Hanukkah. I don’t think it ever wanted to go up against Jesus’ birthday. Hanukkah never wanted to be a holiday that had the pressure of getting presents or creating carols to sing along to. I also don’t think dreidels have anything to do with Hanukkah whatsoever, and I bet Hanukkah is irked about that.

I think all Hanukkah wanted was to remember the eight days that it took to win some random war. No presents, no spinning tops, no theme colors, no fat men breaking into your house. Jews just wanted to get together, light some candles and eat some greasy fried potatoes with their loved ones. If that isn’t a warm fuzzy feeling, I don’t know what is.

So, as I returned to my frat house of a home, passing the Encino Man student and wooly mammoth that are frozen inside the Allston glacial peaks, I missed my family and how much we really don’t care about Hanukkah at all. In fact, we’d much rather just celebrate Christmas like the rest of the world. Keeping tradition alive is great, but everyone can celebrate a birthday. Jesus probably would have wanted all cultures to have cake with him. He might have tried to turn the cake into fish and tick everyone off, but hey, it’s his party.

You might be wondering about Hanukkah’s relevance to my final column. Believe me, I’m just as confused as you are. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to connect Hanukkah with anything in my life, because it simply doesn’t mean anything. It’s a holiday that was fabricated to keep up with Jesus’ grandiose partying every year. So, perhaps just look at this as the present you get on the seventh night of Hanukkah, and tomorrow Neil St. Clair will give you the eighth.

Sarah Shanfield, a junior in the College of Communication, has been a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at shansa@bu.edu.