Goose: A Hanukkah Tradition

[elleng]

'Christmas dinner has it all: a well-balanced feast with a main dish — turkey, ham or goose — a range of sides, delicious desserts and eggnog to top it off. And Hanukkah? Jews typically enjoy latkes smothered in sour cream or applesauce (my preference), jelly doughnuts, chocolate coins and, consequently, eight days of pounding Tums.

While I love these holiday specialties, they don’t constitute a coherent, let alone sensible, meal. For years I’ve suffered the gastric consequences of oddly paired fried foods and desserts without the anchor of a solid and celebrated main course.

The story goes that eating such foods commemorates the unlikely military victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks in ancient times. Once they rededicated the Jewish temple, they found enough oil to light the temple lamp for one day, but somehow the oil lasted for eight. Hanukkah celebrations are about the miracle of oil, and tasty things fried in it.

For Jews like my ancestors from Central and Eastern Europe, the real factor that defined Hanukkah eating was less miraculous: the harsh winter season, when the earth yielded nothing. Jews in prewar Europe ate what was available and made pancakes from grated turnips, potatoes or milled grains. They’d fry them in schmaltz, rendered poultry fat, an essential component of Ashkenazi Jewish cooking.'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/opinion/goose-a-hanukkah-tradition.html?

[Warpy]

1. The problem is the eight day nature of the holiday

Goose every night for eight solid nights would get just as wearing as the rest of the fare.

The writer is in serious error by saying that midwinter was the lean time. It was the time there was still fruit and produce to be had, fruit and vegetables in cool storage and/or pickled, the garden still producing root vegetables and cole crops. The granary was full of wheat, rye, barley, and whatever else they grew. The time around the winter solstice was when you ate all the stuff that wouldn't keep much longer in one big, belt bursting blowout. Jews had the 8 days of Hannukah, Christians the 12 days of Christmas, Vikings feasted as long as the Yule log lasted, so they brought in the biggest tree trunk they could carry.

The hunger gap came in spring when stores from the previous fall were depleted, farm animals were pregnant and couldn't be slaughtered, and milk and eggs were in short supply. That's why Lent was invented, so Christians could feel righteous about eating what little they had, like dried pea and grain porridges and salted fish if they were rich. This was constant across northern and eastern Europe and it didn't matter where you worshiped. .