Hanukkah Traditions At Our House + Family Activities

Been a while since I had a really good post over here! I’m excited to share some of our family Chanukah traditions with you all. My husband and I both grew up celebrating Chanukah, but in a different way than we do now. It was ALL about the presents, but as adults, we understand that there’s so much more to this holiday than that.

Here’s a quick list of some of the traditions I’ve started with our family. Hopefully you’ll enjoy, and maybe you’ll even adopt some of them for your own family!

1. Deck the halls

I grew up decorating my house with garland, wreaths and lights — not exactly your most Jewish of decorations. Now that our lifestyle is a bit more Orthodox (no pun intended), I still want to decorate, but I’ve changed it up a bit.

I started a collection of Chanukah decorations, that I keep in a box in the basement, from year to year. Every year, I get a few new things, mostly from the Target dollar section or Walgreens. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were my Chanukah decorations. We always put the gel sticky decorations on our windows (the kids think it’s really fun), and I buy those new from year to year. Otherwise, I just add to our collection!

These are some of the decorations from my collection.

2. Jam out to hanukkah tunes

We turn up after Thanksgiving! It’s all about Uncle Moishy Chanukah and A Maccabeats Chanukah in our car. It really gets me in the spirit of the season.

3. Make sufganiyot (donuts)

After trying almost all of the donuts that Chicago, Israel and New York have to offer, our family has decided it’s much more frugal to make our own, and they’re less disappointing too. Sometimes when you pay a lot for luxury donuts, they can be a REAL let down, unfortunately.

And we don’t patchky around with them either. We (and by we, I mean my husband) use dinner rolls, deep-fried in oil and rolled in sugar. The end. And they’re absolutely delicious. Every. single. time.

4. Eat Latkes

From Trader Joe’s. They’re perfectly delicious, take about 10 minutes to make and require little to no cleanup. You’re welcome.

5. Sing Maoz Tzur

We do it together as a family, after we light the menorah. Alllll of the verses. It’s taken my husband and I 4 Chanukahs together to get the tune and words all correctly and on key. BUT I THINK WE’VE FINALLY DONE IT. It’s one of my favorite songs (ever), and we only get to sing it 8 times, so I like to make it count.

The joke was that we always ruin it, but it’s really special to nail it too.

After that, we sing more songs with the kids, play dreidel and dance — no phones for 30 minutes after candle-lighting. I love this rule, because Chanukah is still a busy time of year for me, so I do often have to post giveaways and do stories at some point throughout the nights, but this time with just our family, is really important to me.

So that’s it! Some of our family traditions! What are yours? Happy Hanukkah, happy Holidays and a happy New Year!