Chanukah- normal service resumes.

Chanukah - normal service resumes.

Normal service resumes. We always knew it would. It had to really. Last year Chanukah, that wondrous breath of fresh air at the end of the year, is back where it perhaps belongs. In 2016 the Jewish festival of Chanukah began on Christmas Day which at the time seemed to be far too late on the year and almost chronologically incorrect. But amends have been made and the festival of ultra sweet doughnuts and latkes- aka potato cakes- is now well and truly underway.

Across the world Jews will gather together before a menorah- a candlestick with eight candles, sing light heartedly and then feel slightly guilty at the perfectly understandable and excessive devouring of jam, cappuccino, lemon drizzle, chocolate and coffee flavoured doughnuts. Personally I can't get enough of them since this is the one time of the year when as a Jew, I take enormous pleasure in over indulgence, excess and spinning dreidels- spinning tops with Hebrew letters on them.

Essentially Chanukah belongs to the Jewish children of the world but adults must never be excluded from any of these eight precious days of smiling faces, parties and exuberant celebrations. The first candle will be lit in most Jewish homes around the globe. The festivities are of course are uninhibited and unrestrained, outpourings of joy, elation, dancing in the streets and a time to let yourself go without fear of being mocked or criticised.

Every year Jews abandon ourselves shamelessly to the kind of celebration that in just under a fortnight now will be replicated in the Christian calendar. But Chanukah has none of the razzamatazz, tinsel, glamour, turkey eating or ornately wrapped presents normally associated with Christmas. Not for us the fine, upstanding, richly garlanded tree in the corner or the mince pies that lend the whole occasion such a spicy piquancy.

Chanukah is though an altogether different kind of festival. There are no carol singing choirs who yearly turn up on millions of doorsteps, none of those outrageous advertising campaigns for those famously corporate supermarkets, none of the fuss, panic and stress normally associated with Christmas. There are none of those frantic stampedes towards the West End department stores in the hope of buying so many fancy fripperies that you wonder whether Christmas will ever end. But we do know how to have a good time.

Personally Christmas Day for my family will indeed be a special one. My father in law's birthday, by coincidence, falls on Christmas Eve. But this year Chanukah got its dates and times right and in the right order. We now know that you can light our candles in the middle of December, while outside Manor House the crisp and even snow has given way to slightly disconcerting ice. You can now walk the pavements with a purposeful tread without slipping or tripping. The coast is clear everybody. What a relief although the snow itself was a welcome sight depending on your point of view.

So here we are on the first night of Chanukah and for the next eight days or so we will recite our happy- go- lucky songs, don our fancy dress attire and laugh at the merriment of it all. For as long as I can remember, quite certainly, it was that end of the year party where Jews of the world held on proudly to their identity, independence and sense of liberation when all around them was division, discord and dissent. And yet it doesn't have to be like that at all because the Jewish people cherish their traditions, hold onto their love of everybody and everything and never forget that the simple joys of life are there to be treasured.

We are now weeks away from the end of the year and after all the festive flourishes are safely stored away for another year it may be the right time to look at 2017 and wonder whether those disgraceful attacks on our civil liberties and those soul destroying terrorist attacks on London and Manchester will forever be scarred on the conscience on those who committed these evil abominations.

This is not the time to utter our disgust and revulsion, more a time for healing, repairing, sanity and normality. It is not the time for being offensively hurtful to each other, murderous, cold blooded, violent and aggressive because what on earth did that ever achieve? There is though perhaps a time for pausing for breath, extending the hand of friendship and refraining from harm and destruction.

Chanukah was always the one time of the year when we could do a good deed, we could go that extra yard for society without feeling it was the one celebration of the year that had to be accompanied by cheesy sentimentality and schmaltzy candy floss frothiness. It may be easy to dismiss any festival or special occasion as some temporary escape from the rest of the world's ills.

 But that can only be the cynical explanation because both Chanukah and Christmas are the perfect expressions of goodwill and surely that has to be commended. Time to bring on those lovable jam doughnuts. Nobody could possibly turn those down.