Christmas at school, Hanukkah at home
"Jingle Bells, Fingolde smells, Fingolde smells all day..."
Jingle-bell bravado was our way of "warding off the devil" with nasty words set to music by us taunting children to irritate Mr. Fingolde, a reclusive and eccentric neighbour. Every child on my block was afraid of him. Not that he ever hurt us. Or even spoke to us.
Pack mentality: teasing Mr. Fingolde
Old Man Fingolde (we were convinced he didn't have a first name) was my childhood bane. My bogeyman under the bed. And so, like the other kids, I was unkind to him in the uniquely cruel way of children. He was a pathetic creature, a grumpy old man who talked to himself angrily while hunkering around in the shadows of his dark, overgrown yard. Dandelions sprouted gaily everywhere, the only colour in that primordial tangle of weeds.
Winter, as it descended, was kinder to the Fingolde property, rendering it pristine with undulating drifts of diamond-studded snow.
At school, my Grade 2 teacher was pulling out the dog-eared bundles of Christmas carol song sheets, provided free to all Winnipeg public schools, compliments of the T. Eaton Co. Ltd.
Choirs were organized, and, by the first week in December, we were all lustily singing the misheard words that sounded perfect to our seven-year-old ears: "We three kings of porridge and tar" and "Come froggy faithful." What we lacked in musical ability (and accuracy), we made up for in enthusiasm.
Infectious childhood excitement
As Christmas drew near, and with it the school Christmas concert and the holidays, the excitement increased. Christmas parties in every classroom were planned, and 25-cent gifts were bought at Woolworth's and arranged under the classroom tree.
But why wasn't a Christmas tree also being put up at home? Why wasn't my mother baking cookies with sugary designs of Santas and snowmen on them? Why wasn't my father putting up strings of sparkling lights on our house?
Because we were Jewish.
"Jewish people don't celebrate Christmas because that is Jesus' birthday," Mom explained, without really explaining. Jewish people, instead, celebrated something unpronounceable called Hanukkah. The word sounded like a sneeze.
But why, why had I never known or been prepared for this jolt to my system? My busy parents, never very religious, had typically paid Hanukkah scant attention. Apart from the red circles on the calendar denoting the first and last day of the eight-day festival, little else had been done to mark the holiday.
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