With a hearty ho, ho, ho, Menorah Man balances the Christmas blitz

George the Giraffe was late to the puppet show at Temple Menorah. “He was doing some last-minute Hanukkah shopping,” explained Ruthie the Rabbit.

This is what you can do if you’re a Jewish parent and it’s Hanukkah and the little darlings are driving you crazy because it’s Christmas, too, and it’s not fair that all their friends have Christmas trees, sing Christmas carols, get Christmas presents, put up Christmas lights, sit on Santa’s lap--the whole schmear--and you don’t want to be Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch Who Stole Christmas rolled into one and you do want to respect the purity of your own tradition and heritage.

During the winter holidays, you can send the kids to the South Bay Jewish Community Center’s Camp Kadimah in Torrance, where they will meet George, the tardy giraffe. Or they can go to Camp Channukah Chabad of South Bay in Lomita where the Menorah Man--whose white beard suspiciously resembles you-know-who’s--awaits them with presents.

“Instead of competing with the Christmas spirit, why not offer your child a happy, warm Jewish environment?” asks Chabad’s Rabbi Eli Hecht.

“With the children being so overexposed to Christmas that they lose their identity a bit, we are trying to instill in the children that there are Christmas people and there are Hanukkah people.”

Making Hanukkah a counterweight sufficient to balance the multimedia Christmas blitz is a complex process, the South Bay keepers of the Jewish tradition are finding.

A major part of the effort involves the two-week-long, all-day camp experience, where the emphasis is on Hanukkah and the promotion of Christmas is excluded. The schools, which about 25 are attending, offer the standard Sunday School sort of holiday familiarization course.

The children are taught the story of Hanukkah--how the Jews fought for religious freedom, defeating the Syrian invaders who had insisted that they give up their religion and bow down to idols.

The children learn of the great miracle that occurred when the victorious Jews attempted to rededicate the Temple in 165 BC and the holy lamp outlasted a one-day supply of oil, remaining lit eight days until fresh supplies of holy oil could be brought.

They learn Hanukkah songs. They are taught how to make latkes, the delicious potato pancakes that are as much a part of Hanukkah as candy canes are a part of Christmas.

They make menorahs, special candelabra that hold nine candles--eight for the eight days of Hanukkah and one that lights the others. They learn to spin the four-sided dreidel to play for Hanukkah gelt--foil-covered chocolate coins.

They move out from the camps to Lomita City Hall, Olde Towne Mall, the Lomita library, where Hanukkah displays can be seen.

“The idea is to push the exposure of Hanukkah. They pick up a positive image of Jewishness,” Hecht said.

But the seductive and pervasive paraphernalia of Christmas remains a phenomenon so powerful in the United States that, to compensate, Jews in this country have made more of Hanukkah, which elsewhere is a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish calendar. This year, the eight-day holiday begins Saturday night.

Hecht, who thought up Menorah Man this year, is a firm believer that creative ways of interpreting the Jewish tradition are in order when it comes to Christmas.

He likes the way Christmas is celebrated. “I’m happy that Christmas is strong in the United States. My job is not to knock down the Christian experience, but to boost the Jewish experience, the Hanukkah idea,” he said.

Last week for parents, he ran a two-hour seminar on Christmas trees.

“I’m explicitly against a Christmas tree for a Jewish home. They should have a Hanukkah corner,” he said. In it should be stacks of brightly wrapped presents, lights, the menorah “to take the place of Hanukkah bush”--the previous generation’s unsuccessful substitution effort.

“Yeah, it was a bust,” he said.

A Santa substitute, the Menorah Man--a white-bearded figure with a top hat who will ask youngsters what they want for Hanukkah--will appear Sunday at a special Hanukkah celebration sponsored by Chabad.

The message is getting across. to the children. In both schools, all raised their hands when asked if they enjoyed Hanukkah.

But conversations at both schools indicate that the kids sometimes feel caught in the middle.

At Camp Kadimah, Eric Abelson, 9, a third-grader, said, “Last year, we had to sing all those Christmas carols (at school). I didn’t like it too much.”

Hilary Gerson, 8, who lives in Palos Verdes Estates, said she sometimes finds the attitudes of her Christian friends hard to take.

“My friends make it seem like Christmas is the biggest deal, the biggest deal in the world,” she said.

She recently went ice-skating at a mall with her Scout troop and afterward everyone sat on Santa’s lap and was told to mail in a list of what they wanted for presents. She said she didn’t know what to think.

“I said, ‘OK.’ I didn’t know what else to say,” she said, adding that she didn’t believe in Santa Claus. “We’re Jewish so we’re not supposed to.”

“At first, we did,” said Benji Golub, 11, of Torrance. “Then we found out more about our religion, that Jewish people don’t believe in Santa.”

His sister Mishi, 7, learned that when she was 4. Before that, her mother sent the kids to bed for five minutes while “Santa” thumped noisily around the house setting out presents. Mishi said her mother finally explained she was playing the part.

“I felt sad because I thought he was real,” she said.

At Chabad’s camp, Jill Shuster, 6, opened a spirited discussion with the announcement that “my grandma has Hanukkah lights,” confiding that “my grandpa is too lazy to take them down so they stay up all year.”

Ryan Frosberg, 6, objected the practice, arguing that Hanukkah lights strung on a house look too much like Christmas lights.

What’s wrong with that?

“Because Santa will come to my house,” Ryan declared. “I will slam the door on him.” The kids knew that wouldn’t keep out a Santa truly determined to inflict presents.

“He’ll go through the chimney,” several chorused.