Essay: Silver bells, golden latkes

"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.

Click to continue...

Page 1 of 3

I asked Mom if Hanukkah might be as exciting as Christmas. But, no. Apart from an eight-hole candelabra, with an extra hole in the middle, called a menorah, and a few traditional coins doled out to the children on each of the eight days, that was pretty much it.

Oh sure, there was the little wooden top, or dreidel, but it didn't spin very well. It just clunked around and then fell over. Then there was one single Hanukkah song — about guess what? Spinning a dreidel!

Searching for the bright side
Cookies, at least? Nope. A couple of foods were supposed to be special for the holiday, but my grandmother already made potato pancakes, latkes, every Shabbos (Sabbath) Friday night. So what was the big deal?

My tires went flat.

Sure, I might sing Christmas carols and help trim the classroom Christmas tree, but it was all just a sham.

Addicted to Christmas, a true devotee of the holiday season, I'd had the rug pulled out from under me. Didn't my family understand that I loved everything about Christmas; that in comparison, Hanukkah was coming off like a second-rate runner-up?

But wait! That wasn't all! The offhand remark casually spilled out of my mother's mouth: "Mr. Fingolde-across-the-street is Jewish, too, like us."

Did a black hole just swallow me up?

A great holiday disappointment
Nothing could be worse in my child's view of the world. Now there existed a clear demarcation between "us," the ones who didn't get to celebrate Christmas, and "them," the lucky people who did.

Nice Mrs. Carruthers next door, who smilingly invited all the kids on the block in for frothy cups of eggnog and warm gingerbread, was a "them." Crazy Mr. Fingolde was an "us" — and so were my parents and I.

The equation easily followed in my unsophisticated mind: it was Mr. Fingolde's fault that Jewish people didn't get to have Christmas. My disappointment was now final and complete. Christmas would never be mine to celebrate again.

In the face of my abysmal letdown, my parents decided it was time to "pitch" the holiday.

My mother bought me an illustrated book that explained the Festival of Lights. We went shopping for a menorah. That I would receive a gift every day for eight days was definitely cheering.

Then, my mother added that potato pancakes weren't the only holiday staple; a whole multitude of sweet, yummy things were special for Hanukkah.

And my grandparents could teach me lots of new songs at our family Hanukkah parties; the dreidel song was not the only one. I began to think that maybe Hanukkah wasn't such a poor substitute for Christmas after all.

Click to continue...

Page 2 of 3

The following March, I went to visit Mrs. Carruthers after school. My eighth birthday was coming up, and I was excited to tell her the big news. It was while I sipped on a hot cup of her chocolaty cocoa that she happened to tell me a story about Mr. Fingolde, who did have a first name after all. It was Bernard. He had a wife, too, named Pearl. And he had once been as nice as Mrs. Carruthers.

Back then, when the neighbourhood children got tired of Christmas sugar cookies and eggnog, crispy golden latkes with honey-sweetened applesauce were being served right across the street. All you had to do was knock on the Fingoldes' front door.

Like Mr. and Mrs. Claus
Clad in a white apron and a chef's hat, his round face beaming, Mr. Fingolde would half-yank, half-carry the rosy-faced kids inside and peel off their frost-encrusted parkas, handing them off to Mrs. Fingolde. In the warm, fragrant kitchen, fine Royal Doulton dinner plates sparkled beside the polished silverware.

Frying pan in hand, Mr. Fingolde would deftly drop half a dozen sizzling latkes onto each plate the minute his guests sat down. There were always more to come when a plate became empty. It was as though Mr. Fingolde's magic spatula sprouted wings.

But after 51 years of marriage, Mrs. Fingolde died of a heart attack, leaving Mr. Fingolde heartbroken. His mind wasn't the same after that, and there was no one to take care of him because he and his wife had never been able to have children.

"Mr. Fingolde was just a little mixed up and angry sometimes, because he was so sad," Mrs. Carruthers explained. She really was nice.

A new, grown-up understanding
I sat spellbound, my cocoa forgotten, as Mrs. Carruthers finished her story.

The tender, nurturing images blurred the sharp-edged shadows I had so carefully drawn. Her words served as an exorcism, the Sorcerer's broomstick that swept away the cobwebs and lit the dark corners.

Fingolde, that disoriented, spooky man who made it his business to terrify children, disappeared, transformed by the tenderness of all he had been, and his lifelong despair at not having children just like us.

That grey March, when six-foot-high snowbanks still straddled the dreary Winnipeg streets and I was seven-going-on-eight, spring came in a day. Old Man Fingolde had nothing to do with who celebrated Christmas and who didn't. Tears stung my eyes. I would help Mr. Fingolde shovel his snow tomorrow and ask him if he needed anything at the store, I told Mrs. Carruthers. She patted my head. "You're growing up," she whispered. "You're really growing up."

And as I did, the Festival of Lights became an annual family celebration, richer and more meaningful with each passing year.

Page 3 of 3

The holidays have a way of holding special meaning for just about everyone. Homemakers.com readers share the true spirit of Christmas, as seen through their eyes.