According to Sunny 102.1 FM, the Christmas season began when Halloween ended.

According to most sane people, it’s getting under way right about now.

I will admit I’m in love with Sunny 102.1. I wake up to it in the morning. I rock out to it when I’m driving. I blast it when I’m cooking. I can’t get enough of The Boss singing ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town.’

So, with the holidays around the corner, I figured I’d do The D.O. a favor and release the official Christmas Breakdown. Yes, the Italian-Jewish kid is making his list and checking it twice.

The ultimate irony, I find, is that here at Syracuse, we go on what is called winter break. Political correctness aside, we all know the real deal. This is a Christmas break. You wouldn’t ever hear anyone say, ‘Hey, when do you leave for Hanukkah break?’

As a kid, I was in the fortunate position of being able to celebrate both of the big ones. Christmas with my father’s side, Hanukkah with my mother’s side. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on either, but I certainly can’t say that other people at this school know much more.

Again, for the number of Jewish people that go to Syracuse, I’m amazed at how little gentiles know about their Torah-toting brethren.

So, to help you out, I’ve decided to issue my own little Hanukkah primer, if only in comparison to Christmas for clear understanding.

First of all, you Christmas folk win on the mascot – a fat man wearing an inordinate amount of red. Sure, he has a cholesterol problem, but at least his constituents are trying to help him out with offerings of celery. Most of us have a balding, bespectacled man specializing in either banking or doctoring.

As far as the tree/menorah debate goes, I can’t see the bonus to having a tree. It’s like having a hobo live in your house for three weeks. You have to give it water, make sure it looks nice, and you only really use it for two days a year. The menorah, on the other hand, requires nothing. Maybe a sheet of tinfoil so the wax doesn’t spill. Maybe some matches? That’s about it.

Another clear advantage we have is in length. Sure, that stupid song professes there to be 12 days of Christmas. But, that’s about as true as there being eight days of Hanukkah. Really, by around day five, all the presents have been given out; the whole ‘spending time with the family’ reasoning has been exhausted. What the hell is a ‘lord a leaping’ anyway? And 10 of them? Let’s not be ridiculous.

With presents, Christmas takes the cake. And then bakes another one, brings it to a Jewish person’s house and eats it all without sharing. Every year growing up, my non-Jewish friends’ gifts were out of this world. Video game systems, portable DVD players, computers, farmland in Minnesota, stock in a favorite baseball team. What do we get? Well, generally, the first, I don’t know, four nights stink. Dress socks, a calendar, maybe some mechanical pencils.

Yet the real crux of any holiday comes with the food it delivers. Christmas Eve and Day feature the garden variety honey baked ham or possibly roast beef. Some families have a variety of seafood dishes. Either way, nothing beats what Hanukkah has. We’re so zany, we invent foods. Taking a page out of what truly must be the Irish playbook, we have the latke (you pronounce it Laht-kah, FYI).

A non-Jewish friend of mine, we’ll call her Michele Schwartz, had no idea what this was.

‘A potato pie thingy?’

Close enough. In fairness to her, with blonde hair and light colored eyes, she looks more like an Aryan than a Hasidic Jew. The latke, or potato pancake, is truly innovative. It has to rank up there with radio and fire.

I haven’t even mentioned the dreidel. If you want real rip-roaring fun, head over to your nearest Jewish friend’s house anywhere from Dec. 4 to Dec. 12 at around 6:45 p.m. Little known fact: that’s prime dreidel-spinning time. Something about the amount of sunlight, the position of the moon….

I guess it’s clear: Hanukkah wins. Not really a shocker there, especially from an unbiased source. But what are holidays really about? No, not tinsel; family. So, in that vein, I leave you with the sweet croonings of Mariah Carey when she sings, ‘I just want you for my own/ more than you could ever know/ make my wish come true/ baby, all I want for Christmas is…you.’

Scott Spinelli’s column appears every Thursday. He also wants to give a shout out to Pearl Harbor and Boxing Day. And, big ups to Kwanzaa.

Published on November 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm