Tonight was the first night of our holiday celebration. It started out with a bang! A traumatic bang! My daughter was injured while out playing with her cousins. She is fine but it really scared her and truthfully – scared me too!
The candles were placed in each menorah. We have a total of five menorahs. We have our very first menorah which is now the one my hubby and I share. Then each of our children have their own menorahs. Finally, we have two extra and we use those if we have company over and they want to light their own menorah.
As I have already shared, our celebration is largely patterned after Hanukkah. Yet, we have added our own traditions and meanings to it. We light the menorah each night. However, each candle represents something each night.
There is one candle that stands above all the rest. It is called the Shamash candle or servant candle. It is the one that is used to light all the other candles. My hubby and I together lit our Shamash candle as we said: “Yeshua said: I am the Light of the world.”
Then each child lit their Shamash candle and said the same thing.
My hubby then said a blessing that is said each evening after the Shamash candle is lit. He said:
“Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe,
who has kept us in life, sustained us and brought us to this
season.”
My hubby and I together took our Shamash candle and lit the first candle while saying: “Those who follow Jesus shall not walk in darkness.” Then the children did the same with their own Shamash candles and first candles.
My hubby then said another blessing including blessing our meal. We then enjoyed dinner with the candles burning brightly. We had music playing this whole time as well.
We discussed what our candles represented tonight. Let me share with you as well.
Tonight, the Shamash candle represents God. The first candle represented Adam. When God created the world, He created man. And so life began in this world.
After dinner was done and dishes cleaned up, we played the much anticipated game of Dreidels. I’ll explain this game on another night. Tonight, I want to share with you our tradition of reading. Each year, we read a book or story each evening of our celebration. We try to buy one new book each year to add to our collection. We read a story before the children’s bedtime. We have a special book called “While the Candles Burn.” It has eight stories in it, one for each night of Hanukkah. I was bummed when we couldn’t find this book. So tonight, we were not able to read our traditional story “Day by Day.” I will miss not being able to read from this book. However, we have other books we also read from so we will still be doing that. Tonight, our daughter read out loud to all of us the “Story of Hanukkah” from the book “My Favorite Hanukkah Book”. She did a wonderful job! She read another little section out of that book as well. We looked at some old photos my son had found and then it was time for bed for the children.
Even though, it took a little time to chill out after the traumatic beginning, it was a pretty good evening. We took pictures tonight and are going to try and get them developed and on a disk tomorrow. I hope to be able to post some of the pics tomorrow. Until tomorrow then……
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