Chanukah - Picture book line-up

We STILL love our Christmas/Chanukah picture books! I sometimes think picture books are written as much for adults as they are for kids. We find that we enjoy them just as much, and Mane still loves them after all these years. This is the line-up for seven of the eight nights of Chanukah reading:

The Story of Hanukkah by Bobbi Katz & Illustrated by Linda Dockey Graves
In the Month of Kislev by Nina Jaffe & Illustrated by Louise August
Nine Spoons by Marci Stillerman & Illustrated Pesach Gerber
The Hanukkah Mice by Ronne Randall & Illustrated by Maggie Kneen
Elijah's Angel by Michael Rosen & Illustrated by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson
Christmas Tapestry by Patricia Polacco
The Tree of the Dancing Goats by Patricia Polacco

Photo Highlights from Chanukah

Gluten Free Sweet Potato Latkes - Try them with Beets!

These were the best! So delicious! My family raved and raved (and ate and ate). Eaten alongside the homemade applesauce from this summer, they were the perfect Chanukah meal!

Gluten Free Sweet Potato Latkes

3 Large Shredded Sweet Potatoes (this made about 6 cups - maybe more)
6 eggs (enough to get everything moist because the eggs hold it all together)
1 cup Bob's Red Mill gluten free all purpose flour (or GF flour of your choice)
1t. salt

Mix it all together. Fry in 1/4-1/2 inch of coconut oil! If you keep to a medium/low heat coconut oil does not burn or smoke and the latkes get crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. 

We ate them with applesauce and slices of sharp white cheddar cheese. Enjoy!

Edited to Add: These are also quite tasty with half beets & half sweet potatoes!

8 Picture Books for 8 Days of Chanukah/Hanukkah

Tomorrow is the first night of Chanukah, which means it's the first of eight nights of double holidays in our house! This means we'll be lighting a lot more candles and bringing together our focus on the miracle of light...literal and figurative. We'll also be having a lot of fun, as Chanukah is a holiday of games, gifts & treats! Break out the gluten free jelly donuts, latkes & applesauce, and the Chanukah books, please!

This year we decided to do a picture-book-a-day Advent calendar. We combined it with our magnetic nativity calendar by placing a slip of paper inside each of the doors, along with the magnetic figures. The slip of paper has a book title, and that's the book we read after putting up the magnetic figure each day.

The First Six Magnets are up after last night...December 6th

A magnetic figure and a slip of paper behind each door

Because Chanukah is in the middle of Advent this year, I chose Chanukah books to write on the slips of paper for the 8 days of Chanukah. Here they are:

1. Hanukkah Haiku written by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Karla Gudeon

2. The Story of Hanukkah written by Bobbi Katz, illustrated by Linda Dockey Graves

3. Beni's First Chanukah written and illustrated by Jane Breskin Zalben

4. In the Month of Kislev: A Story for Hanukkah written by Nina Jaffe, illustrated by Louis August

5. The Hanukkah Mice  written by Ronne Randall, illustrated by Maggie Kneen

6. Nine Spoons: A Chanukah Story written by Marci Stillerman, illustrated by Pesach Gerber

7. Snow Crazy written and illustrated by Tracy Gallup AND Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening written by Robert Frost, illustrated by Susan Jeffers (Thess, of course, are not specifically Chanukah books. They're seasonal books, and I wanted to include them in the list somewhere because they're so sweet and beautiful.)

8. Hanukkah Moon written by Deborah da Costa and illustrated by Gosia Mosz

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Read about why we celebrate Chanukah here: Why Celebrate Chanukah?

Why celebrate Chanukah?

Chanukah begins December 8th this year! That's this coming Saturday, and we've already got our chanukiahs (chanukah menorahs) out and ready to go! We have hung blue lights in our kitchen & put up our Chanukah banner!

So, why do we, as Christian non-ethnically-Jewish people, celebrate Chanukah (and other Biblical holidays, for that matter)? The answer is not actually all that difficult. It's surprising to me, in many ways, that we didn't do this a whole lot sooner:

So, we know that Jesus was Jewish, we know that God brought Jesus, the Messiah and savior of the world, TO the world through the Jewish people. These people were chosen and set apart as the people of the Promise, the people through whom redemption would come. And they were given a set of holidays and traditions that would honor God and keep them focused on serving and remembering the promises throughout the year. Because we, as Christians, serve that very same God, we choose to honor those holiday.

We also choose to honor the holidays that commemorate the times when the Jewish people have been miraculously and supernaturally preserved from destruction. We acknowledge that we serve a God whose covenant is everlasting and cannot be broken. Chanukah is one of these holidays. We believe that we, as believers in the Messiah and servants of the very same God, have been grafted in to the "family tree." In Romans 11 Paul says,  speaking of the Gentiles (that's non-Jewish people):

"...you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree..."

As a "grafted in" part of the tree we celebrate with the tree! We celebrate that the roots have been preserved and that we receive the nourishment of life and hope through this tree!