# When did Hanukkah become important to American Jews? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 28, 2010, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149 "2010-11-28T04:51:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![installLSC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/54ee81/32.png) [@installLSC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/installLSC)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/1 "2010-11-28T04:51:28Z")
It’s commonly claimed that Hanukkah was a sparsely celebrated holiday until the 20th century among Jews, and that it only took off as a response to the cultural ubiquity of Christmas. Now it is so popular among American Jews that some surveys hold it is second only to Passover as the most observed holiday. My question is when exactly did Hanukkah become anything more than a minor festival for American Jews? Was there an orchestrated campaign to make it popular? And for Jews in countries like England and Israel, is it anywhere near as popular as it is in the US? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/2 "2010-11-28T06:34:13Z")
That’s a good question. I bet most people in America, Jews included, don’t realize that Hanukkah is supposed to be a minor festival with a little bit of money only given to the kids. Adults giving each other Hanukkah presents is a recent innovation. In my memory, which goes back to the late 1960’s it has been a big deal. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/3 "2010-11-28T07:11:17Z")
I was raised Jewish (Reform) in the 50s. We were one of only a few Jewish families in our neighborhood and my parents didn’t want us to feel left out, so we got presents on all eight days of Hanukkah and also on Christmas. So making a “big deal” of Hanukkah, at least in our case, went back to the 50s. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/4 "2010-11-28T13:25:08Z")
[One version of the answer.](http://www.slate.com/id/10802/) > [@](#): > > First, Christmas had to become Christmas, which originally wasn’t a big deal in America. … Around 1900, millions of eastern European Jews came to the United States, congregating in urban enclaves such as New York’s Lower East Side. Most adopted American traditions, including the newly secularized Christmas. … The second generation of American Jews challenged this embrace of a festival that, despite its secular trappings, was fundamentally Christian. But parents couldn’t very well deprive their kids of gifts or seasonal merriment, and Hanukkah benefited from convenient timing. Instead of giving the traditional “gelt,” or money, Jews celebrated with presents, so as not to fall short of their Christian neighbors. Prominent religious leaders, more secure with maintaining a Jewish identity in America, now urged schools to let Jews abstain from yuletide celebrations or to provide all-purpose holiday parties instead. Lighting the menorah proved a satisfying alternative to adorning a tree with colorful lights. > Zionism, which gathered converts in the years before World War II, also boosted Hanukkah’s stock. The holiday’s emphasis on self-reliance and military strength in the face of persecution dovetailed with the themes of nationalists seeking to establish a Jewish state. The warrior-hero Judah Maccabee, leader of an ancient revolt, morphed into a proto-Zionist pioneer. At first, Zionist organizations used the holiday as an excuse to prod individuals to donate coins to the cause. In later years they packed Madison Square Garden for Hanukkah fund-raising galas, featuring such keynoters as Albert Einstein and New York Gov. Herbert Lehman. > After World War II, as Jews moved with other Americans to suburbia, Hanukkah shored up its place as their No. 1 holiday. In the early '50s, in a famous Middletown-style study of a Chicago suburb referred to as “Lakeville,” sociologist Marshall Sklare found that lighting the Hanukkah candles ranked as the most popular “mitzvah,” above hosting a Passover Seder and observing the Sabbath. Sklare attributed the holiday’s popularity to its easy accommodation to Christmas rituals as well as to its ability to be redefined for modern times. The Hanukkah lesson being taught, Sklare noted, was no longer reverence to God for performing a miracle but rather the triumph over religious intolerance–a perfect message for liberal America in the age of the civil rights movement. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/5 "2010-11-28T15:03:25Z")
As DSeid alluded to, Hanukkah is a big deal here in Israel. While gift-giving isn’t a huge part of it (although it does exist, mainly with kids), it’s still one of the most popular holidays, with some of the best food, the best songs and the best activities. It’s one of those holidays that even many die-hard atheists have no problem taking part in. Of course, the fact that it’s an eight-day school vacation - and the only vacation between early autumn and spring - also helps. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/6 "2010-11-28T15:35:08Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > As DSeid alluded to, Hanukkah is a big deal here in Israel. While gift-giving isn’t a huge part of it (although it does exist, mainly with kids), it’s still one of the most popular holidays, with some of the best food, the best songs and the best activities. It’s one of those holidays that even many die-hard atheists have no problem taking part in. > > Of course, the fact that it’s an eight-day school vacation - and the only vacation between early autumn and spring - also helps. Has it always been so? About 15 years ago a friend of mine who grew up in Israel told me that it was a very minor holiday. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/7 "2010-11-28T17:22:21Z")
When I was growing up in the 40s, it was a very minor holoday. We kids received small gifits, mainly things like chocolate “money” (foil-wrapped chcolate disks) and adults never gave gifts to each other. We did get Christmas presents, though, but a tree was considered rather too Christian. To our kids (but only ours), we gave rather more substantial presents at Chanukah and nothing at Christmas. This thread is the first I have heard of adults receiving gifts. I am astonished and appalled. Astonished because it is new to me and unexpected. Appalled because… I think of my sister married into an Italian family who told me maybe 20 years ago (so adjust the numbers) that each year she and her husband gave gifts worth about $2000 to his relatives and receive gifts worth about the same from them. In particular, MIL must receive a gift worth at least $500 or there’s be hell to pay. And had she been from such a family, you would have to double those numbers. What this meant was all her luxury spending was chosen by people who hadn’t the foggiest idea what she and her husband really wanted. I’ll buy my own luxury things, thank you. We give gifts to our grandchildren, but not our children, who are grown. And we very rarely get gifts and, when we do, it is either something minor or else a major gift (e.g. an all-expense trip to Hawaii for a week) that the giver (my son) wants to give in order to share his family’s vacation and, in any case, not for a made-for-marketers occasion. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/8 "2010-11-28T20:41:39Z")
In my family the adult kids give gifts to parents and adult siblings give gifts to each other. I think that it’s bullshit. I few years ago, I opted out of the whole thing and declared that I would only give gifts to nieces and nephews (no kids of my own.) ---
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-hanukkah-become-important-to-american-jews/562149/9 "2010-11-30T01:24:02Z")
About the same time that Hispanics in the US started celebrating [Cinco de Mayo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_mayo), which is celebrated in Mexico mainly in the state of Puebla.