Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah, come light the LED Menorah! Let’s have a party, we’ll all dance the hora.
Gather round the responsibly harvested table, we’ll give you a treat, dreidels to play with and organic latkes to eat.
That’s the chant I hope members of my tribe will be singing during the upcoming festival of lights. We can’t compete with Christmas and the surfeit of colorful decorations that line roofs and front lawns…and maybe that’s a good thing. Instead of connecting new, energy-sucking lights, we can turn ours off, light the menorahs with soy candles, or buy a $25 battery operated LED Motherboard Menorah (above) at Fred Flare which allows you switch on a candle for each night.
Here are some other ways to green the silver and blue this season:
If you send Chanukah cards, opt for a 100% recycled photo message from My Good Greetings. Their images are really beautiful and natural and no new trees have to be killed to recall the burning of the oil in the temple.
Make latkes the way Bubba made them before corporations corrupted farming methods. You can find wonderful organic potato pancake recipes at sites like Sustainable Table which call for organic potatoes and fresh ingredients. Naturally, you will want to top them off with a dollop of organic sour cream and apple sauce. Let your kids help make them (my husband will be pitching in at school this week for a latke tutorial) and tell them you are using organic ingredients.
You can also find great recipes for the traditional jelly donuts (sufganiyot), including a delicious, wheat-free, low fat option I stumbled upon at Hoshana Rabbah.
If you have children and follow the ritual of presenting a gift each night for eight nights, I love the idea someone once shared of selecting a theme and making each night about that theme, for example, reading (a great book on the planet); gardening (a tool and seeds for your organic veggie plot); animals (a DVD on saving the polar bears or other endangered species). And don’t buy wrapping paper for these treasures. Just reuse your reusable bags, and let them pull the items out.
They will enjoy the gifts hidden in earthy canvas just as those wrapped in wasteful paper.
Front page thumbnail image: Unhindered by Talent