It’s important when you are 5 years old and all your friends have Santa coming to town.
It’s not a major holiday, but we turned it into one partly because if you commercialize it business makes money, and partly, like I mentioned above, so Jewish kids don’t feel left out at holiday time in a country whose majority is celebrating Christmas.
I would assume still in Israel they don’t do gift giving on Chanukah except for some money maybe? Maybe they have started doing gift giving at this point too, I don’t know? My FIL didn’t do any gifts on Chanukah in Mexico growing up.
Other Jewish holidays are much more important and more holy. Chanukah celebrates a very nice miracle of the lights, but isn’t from the Old Testsment, it’s after the fact having to do with a story about a moment in time in history.
Your roommate isn’t a bitch because of this, she is teaching you something. Almost everyone picks and chooses how they celebrate or adhere to their religion and holidays. Would you say such a thing to someone who celebrates Christmas, but never goes to church? A big percentage of Jews don’t keep kosher, it’s totally fine with reform rabbis, they don’t either usually. You are wrong about how you are thinking about this. I’m glad you asked the question.
@chyna Did you mean to put a tilde?