“Oh, no, you didn’t get gin into my latke onions, did you, dear?”

That’s a quote, and it made me laugh, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with being three sips into my second martini. “T’was the night before Chanukah/and all through the house/not a creature was stirring/not even a slightly loopy comic.”

We’re having some folks and kids over tonight, Friday, for the first night of The Festival of Lights, and my wife has been cooking all day. I just made a martini and went to pour it, and the lid fell off the shaker and splashed its contents onto the clean counter in the kitchen. And in forty minutes Amber and Susie and their husbands and their kids are coming over to light candles and over-indulge. Leave it to Jews to actually codify the tradition that the best way to celebrate a survival military victory is to eat fried foods. (That’s actually true. Some holidays say, “Fruit and nuts,” some say, “Sackcloth and ashes,” but this one says — seriously — fried foods. The heaviest, worst stuff in the world. As Lotus Weinstock used to say, “Jewish food was invented by Nazis.” )

And when the lid flew into my glass (and stuck the landing) a dazzling spray of gin went all over the place, right where my wife had prepared the shredded potatoes and onions and such. And that’s what she exclaimed: “Oh, no, you didn’t get gin into my latke onions!” Not angrily, though, perhaps owing to the fact that she was three sips into HER drink, a neat Glenfiddich. Somehow I don’t think our ancestors celebrated quite the same way.

Some say this is a minor holiday, but I disagree. It’s 165 B.C. (I still say B.C., and intentionally) and the Maccabees have vanquished the Greek Syrians in a battle they weren’t supposed to win. The Greek Syrians were culturally dominant in the levant, and had decreed that no people, including Jews, were allowed to practice any religion that strayed from theirs, and Judah Maccabee said, “Hmm… No.” And he led a rebellion, and it worked, and… well, there’s been a bit of trouble since (perhaps you’ve noticed), but that’s worth celebrating to me.

It just happens to occur very near Christmas, so it’s attained some rough equivalence, but it shouldn’t. One has nothing to do with the other. Christmas is the biggest holiday for Christians, as it should be, the birth of Jesus, and it should be big.

This holiday, hanukah, though it didn’t make the Old Testament and isn’t mentioned, is important, at least to me.

At the very least, it gives me a chance to come home from a good job I’m grateful to have, in a country I love, and spill olives all over my wife’s counter. And you can’t beat that.

I’m going to the L.A. Auto Show Sunday with the kids, something we do every year, and I’ll tell you about it then. Tomorrow night we’re getting together with a couple of coaches and show people at a Mexican restaurant that makes killer Marqueritas and guacamole. The coaches are Italian and Irish, the food is Mexican, the brandy is French, the coffee is Columbian…

Only in America, eh?

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY AND WERE WELL ENOUGH TO EAT A LITTLE FOOD THAT’S FRIED, THE GAME’S OVER, AND WE’LL ALL MACCABEES.