Q:
Is giving Chanukah gifts an imitation of gentile practices?
A:
And the answer is, it certainly is. It’s the season when the stores are full of good things and everybody is moved to buy. There’s a great campaign to save your money for you. All the stores have big signs in the windows, ‘Save!’, ‘Save!’, ‘Save!’ And so as a result you start spending.
However, this has to be tempered with a little bit of mildness because the children might feel deprived. And therefore it wouldn’t be amiss, it wouldn’t be out of place to give some presents. But to go around with a long list, a paper a yard long, and say ‘I have to do my Chanukah shopping’ that’s nothing but an imitation of goyim. You want to give gifts? So give gifts for Pesach. You can give gifts for Purim. You want to give gifts for Chanukah too? So we won’t criticize that.
But to make a big fuss about it, Chanukah-giving as an ideal? So you might as well sing carols and put up a Chanukah tree. Because that’s what it is.
TAPE # 195 (December 1977)
