Chanukah and Christmas Confusion!

Oh no! What are we going to do? Chanukah and Christmas are at the same time this year! Christmas Eve coincides with the first night of Chanukah. We are a multi-cultural family. I'm Jewish, Larry is a Generic Gentile. We celebrate both holidays. We light the menorah candles during Chanukah, eat latkes and think about playing dreidle. On Christmas we put up the aluminum tree, decorate the house and have some family and friends over for Christmas Day brunch.

Christmas Day, 2014 with Rhoda, Roz, Larry, Audrey and Jeff

Shall I decorate the house with red, green, blue and white? Shall we place only Chanukah decorations on our tree? What's for brunch? Well, I really don't have to worry about brunch. I serve the same meal every year, always a cultural Jewish feast: Lox, whitefish, bagels, cream cheese, rugalah, etc. After presents, we usually hum a few holiday tunes while I accompany the choir on my ukulele.

I was sad to hear that the Music Center will NOT be holding their Ukulele Christmas Sing-a-long this year. I always LOVED meeting up with other festive ukulele strummers to sing holiday songs. Maybe this event got too popular or the Music Center staff just couldn't schedule it this year. Sigh.

Hundreds of Ukulele Players Show up for the Music Center Holiday Uke-A-Long. Sigh.

I will pull out my little red notebook of holiday songs and brush up for a mini-home concert. However, I may just try to work up a Chanukah song for an online concert on Neil's blog! I participated in 2006. It's ten years later, so it might be time to participate again. 

I am totally obsessed with Ricky Hirsch's original song, "Spin Lil' Dreidle."  20 years ago, when Juke Logan and I were co-hosting KPCC's "Friday Night Blues Revue," I put the call out to all my musician friends to create a Chanukah blues song. We received quite a few great cassettes of original songs. Ricky's was my favorite. My brother, Ken has helped me figure out a few of the licks on this song and suggested some other jazzy chord inversions. Stay tuned!