Happy chanukah everybody.

 Happy Chanukah everybody. 

It is one of the most celebrated of celebrations, a Jewish festival of lights, the one time of the year when everything feels much more optimistic, encouraging, satisfying, heart warming and just good to be alive. And yet this is the way it should always be. In the Jewish religion, we reserve our happiest moments for the times when the chips are down and the odds are heavily stacked against us. We do understand negativity and nihilism, the bleakest and most heart breaking scenarios. We're conditioned to the setbacks and painful crisis. We get it and embrace those wondrous periods of reassurance and positivity warmly. It can be done and we must maintain those feelgood vibes for they're the best.   

So today marks the first night of Chanukah, that timeless homage to sweetness, excellent food and the most scintillating company. We're Jewish and we love family gatherings, something to look forward to and, above all, stunning lightness and brightness, shining through the wintry gloom, radiating powerful hope to everybody around the world and flickering symbolically from a million window sills. 

It always seemed a lovely coincidence that Chanukah's first night fell at roughly the same time as Christmas. But last year, Chanukah overlapped with Christmas Day excitedly. There was a fleeting acknowledgement that both Chanukah and Christmas were like old friends reunited on the same day and same place. It was the first night for both of these admirable religions and what a party we must have had. 

So here we are at the moment when the year draws to a close and, as proud Jews, we gather together around the roaring log fires of winter around the world and express gratitude and rejoicing in a way we think is right and proper. For millions of years and countless centuries, Chanukah has stood at the end of the year, patiently anticipating those delicious indulgences, those mouth wateringly enticing sweet treats and savoury delights that only we can find particularly special because we deserve it. 

And at tea time today the vast Jewish global population will be gently planting eight candles in our Menorah, softly chanting the relevant prayers, blessing our kith and kin, our loved ones and then abandoning ourselves joyfully to doughnuts and salt beef with latkes(potato cakes). Now it has to be said that nothing beats that first tantalising taste of these delightful snacks or even dinners. At no point during the year do we ever eat these gastronomically breath taking foods as part of a festival. Or maybe we do. Today, though, is different.

Of course both the salt and beef latkes and doughnuts have never done anything for your waistline and they do indeed jeopardise any diet we may have been privately considering. Chanukah is cholesterol heaven for those who simply don't care and can eat anything that supposed to be kind to your stomach and digestive system. But we do Chanukah ever year and we love it, because it is a guilty pleasure and besides we all need something to make us smile and give us a good, old fashioned laugh. 

Year after year we stand respectfully around the Menorah and think of all those Hebrew classes parties as a kid when we sung with heartfelt conviction, hitting all the right notes, quavers and crotchets. In Israel, this is a particularly triumphant time of the year. The ceasefire agreement with Hamas is holding exultantly and, for the first time in what must seem ages, the lovely folk of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Eilat, Natanya will be waking up this morning without a single sound of a wartime air siren, a blast of gunfire, explosion of bomb and tragic death. It will be time to think of Chanukah. 

It is hard to believe how the Jews of the world survived the Second World War and the nightmare of the Holocaust and still lit candles at Chanukah. There is a flinty resilience and hard nosed character about the Jewish people that never fails us even when everything looks hopeless and woebegone. We just carry on doggedly, undeterred, battling for recognition and identity, reaching out to attractive continents, islands, sovereignties and land locked countries that most of us have never heard of. 

This evening Jewish children and grandchildren will be eagerly clapping their hands, smiling endlessly, joking jovially and exchanging Chanukah gelt(money). There will be the customary distribution of cute gifts and presents and then we look longingly at those doughnuts. They usually come in all of the most gorgeous flavours and are unbelievably moreish, a taste addiction. At long last, after all the wickedness, savagery, suffering, man's brutal inhumanity to man, woman and child, there is something to hold on to. It couldn't have come at a better time. 

There will be something in the air tonight. Jews know how to have a good time. They raise bridegrooms into the air and then lift a chair towards the ceiling at weddings. They dance Hava Nagila, repetitive choruses of Hatikvah, innumerable Jewish folk songs and effusive homages to life L'Chaim. They break bread or challah, drinking wine because that's inherently communal and you can't beat some good, old fashioned booze. Then the rabbis get emotionally involved and we're all swept along  on a tidal wave of euphoria.

Essentially though Chanukah is all about redemption, finding the light amid the darkness, compatible shades of colour, a rich fruition of life's glorious conquests, a time to pat ourselves on our backs and just be content with who we are rather than the way it might have been. Looking back in hindsight may be a constructive exercise for some but Chanukah is a time for eating jam doughnuts, custard and chocolate doughnuts, orange and pineapple doughnuts if they become available. L'chaim and to life for ever.