(no subject)

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! In this time of copious press coverage of the various kinds of monitoring conducted by the current administration, via the NSA, of , you might enjoy paying attention to a slightly different kind of monitoring of communications - the NORAD Santa-tracking system. It's slightly less inoccuous, I think.

Happy Hanukah to all who join me in celebrating it! You might enjoy a very humerous take on how XMas would be celebrated if the holiday had been created under Jewish law.

Obviously, it's meant in good and cheerful spirits. Also in the spirit of the season, Michael Lerner of Tikun wrote up the history of Hanukah and its meaning today. It gave me some food for thought this morning, as I gathered the ingredients for ginger cookies - we buy our latkes because (a) Epicure makes them better than I do, and (b) cooking with hot oil and kids around makes me jittery.

To those who celebrated Yule this past week, I hope you had a peaceful one, and to those who begin Kwanza on Monday, I hope you have a beautiful and light-filled one.

I'm off to clean off the Menorah and take out the dreidel collection, which my grandfather began over 75 years ago.