Earlier this week, my kids and I were talking.  Why, they wanted to know, do Christians have Christmas lights when Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights?  Having no good answer for this, I decided to Google “Outdoor Hanukkah Lights” and there it was.

No, I didn’t find the answer to my question. I found a house so garishly decorated (think of those over the top Christmas houses, then substitute menorahs for reindeer, dreidels for Santa, the list goes on…)  that the only the to do was laugh. And copy. And paste. And post to Facebook. 

Within seconds, my children watched as I captioned the photo, “Happy Hanukkah from our house to yours.”  

“What are you doing?” they asked.

“Pretending that’s our house,” I told them matter-of-factly.  They looked at each other and burst into crazy giggles.   Within seconds we had one “like,” then two, then three.  They kept coming.  Apparently my list of friends is so polite that I can post the tackiest thing in America and they will hit “like” to support me.  Clearly I have very kind friends.

The first question came within five minutes, “Is that your house?’  Followed by the next one, “Oh my gosh, no way.  Is that really your house?”  I chose not to answer publicly to see how long I could pull this off.

My neighbor asked, “Did you move?”  Still nothing from our end.  My friend in Chicago told me that it was cool.  My husband told me he’d be mad when he got home.  My sister convinced me to look outside and see if I had anyone driving by to check.

It wasn’t until my other neighbor posted, “I’m looking outside my window right now and that does not look like your house” that we were officially busted.  

I still don’t know the answer as to why there are Christmas lights and not Hanukkah lights, but with all of these “likes,” I have a feeling that there may be a holiday tradition underway.

We’ll just have to wait until next year to find out.