We celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah in our house, as I am Jewish and hubby is Catholic. The kids are now 5 years old and cognizant of what's what as far as presents go. If you are in a mixed household how do you handle dividing up presents? If I give them each one present each night for eight nights for Hannukah, that means there won't be too big a bang as far as presents go on Christmas morning. I've thought about giving them one large or semi-large gift on the first night of Hanukkah and then just holding off on the rest until Christmas. But then what about when they hear there are "eight crazy nights?" I'm interested in how others handle this with their kids or how it was for them as children. Thanks!
2007-11-29 12:02:28 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Holidays ➔ Hanukkah
My husband is Methodist and I am Jewish. But we chose to raise our child Jewish to avoid this confusion.
We don't celebrate Christmas, only the Jewish holidays. My husband still goes to church on Christmas and I'll give him a gift... but it's not something my child will be participating in (no tree either).
I think in your case, my best recommendation would be to discuss this with your husband. Figure out if you want to buy 8 gifts for Chanukah plus several more gifts for Christmas for each child...but that's a ton of stuff.
The other thing would be to buy, say, 6 gifts for each child. Give 3 over the first 3 nights of Chanukah and save 3 for Christmas. As for the other days of Chanukah, just light the candles and celebrate with traditional foods like latkes, chocolate gelt and donuts. There's no reason you have to have 8 gifts for Chanukah.
You can even use one of the days of Chanukah to teach your children about the Jewish tradition of charity and have them go shop with you and buy an inexpensive toy to donate to Toys for Tots.
There's all sorts of things you can do instead of get gifts each day of Chanukah.
2007-11-29 12:26:11 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
As as child growing up, I was raised in a hanukkah/christmas home (and it still is). Growing up, I would get smaller gifts for hanukkah (a cd one night, pjs the next, 5 dollar gift card to my favorite ice cream shop) and then 1 big "santa" gift as well as a few smaller gifts on christmas. The "santa" gift is typically the big gift that was on the top of my list. As I reached high school, I got gifts for the first few nights and then the rest on christmas. Now that I'm grown, my parents and I will exchange 1 gift for the first night of Hanukkah and the rest will be for christmas.
2007-12-02 10:37:50 · answer #2 · answered by ~Samantha~ 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Most people don't give their kids gifts every night of Hanukkah. You don't want to give your children the idea that the holiday is only about presents (same deal with Christmas). What we usually do is give gifts a few of the nights, and the rest of the nights we do family activities...play games, go out to a resturant, go out and see all the lights, stuff like that. If you want to give gifts every night, there are some inexpensive ways to do so. Give them some gelt (chocolate coins) one night, and play dreidel. Get a "family" gift, like a new board game or holiday book and read together, stuff like that.
My one other suggestion, because Hanukkah, sadly, "competes" with Christmas in American culture, is making sure you give them one "wow" gift for Hanukkah, and one "wow" gift for Christmas. They are too young at this point to understand the significance of the holidays, but you don't want them to get the idea that one of them is "better" than the other.
2007-11-29 15:57:32 · answer #3 · answered by missbeans 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
An old teacher of mine is Jewish and her Husband is Catholic So what they did was celebrate Christmukka. They would give and open Christmas gifts every day of Hanukka. That way both religions and holidays were practiced.
2007-12-07 04:24:22 · answer #4 · answered by Miclo 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Make the Chanukah gifts more traditional, you can even include some handmade gifts!
Children love that kind of thing, and will probably really appreciate that tradition when they are older. On that note....
Alternatively, you can make things with your children on each of the 8 nights--dreidls, handrolled beeswax candles, gelt bags, you could even make the chocolate gelt with them if you find a coin shaped candy mold! You can make sugar cookies--in the shape of menorahs, stars of david, dreidls, etc. They can assist(measuring flour and such since they are young)in making latkes...
2007-12-04 06:40:38 · answer #5 · answered by Rachel 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
My kids get 1 gift for Chanukah. Who could afford 8 anymore?! LOL
They get the rest on Xmas morning from us and Santa.
2007-12-03 02:52:18 · answer #6 · answered by KathyS 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
buy them the amount of gifts you would get them if you were only celebrating one of the holidays (so that they dont get too many or too little an amount). then just split them up evenly (either by quantity or price, you can pick). pick the 2 biggest presents and give one on each holiday. if you run out of presents for the 8 days of chanukah, just buy them small presents that they would still like (small nick nack and things like that) and give them one of those toys on each night.
2007-11-29 15:15:03 · answer #7 · answered by dumbbrunnett88 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋