Purim
The biggest holiday celebration in our household!
Purim pictures, 2014
What in the world is Purim?
On Purim, everybody dresses in their best; after all, it's a BIG day!
In case you haven't heard yet, we do not celebrate Christmas with any parties or gift giving or anything similar. Instead our observation of Christmas, if any, is rather small and quiet. Which leaves the obvious question... When did we give and receive gifts?
For a while, our family celebrated on New Year's Day with a gift exchange and cards. But we still were searching for another alternative. We wanted to have a special day set aside just for gift giving and having fun. After all, isn't that what Christmas is for most families? But Christmas, to us, seemed the wrong setting for a self-centered day of fun and play, and New Year's Day was not quite the day we were looking for either (we celebrated on New Year's Day as well, but it was a little bit different). Then, one day, when Dad was looking through the Bible for a daily verse (see: Home School / Focus on the Bible), he ran across the verses in the book of Esther that read, "And Mordecai wrote these things...to establish among them that they should celebrate yearly the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar... that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor... So they called these days Purim, after the name Pur (meaning: casting of lots)." ( Esther 9:20-26) This is the only place in the Bible where there is any mention of a day set aside for the giving gifts to one another.
Voila! The day we had been looking for! Feasting, joy, and gift giving... That's exactly what the day was made for! And so, that following year after researching a little bit to see when the next celebration of Purim was, we had our own version of a Purim celebration.
After that we always did our - rather large(!) - gift exchange on Purim. We also liked to serve special dishes for at least one or more of the meals on those days. We did not observe Purim according to the Jewish tradition, but we did adopt, or maybe I should say, adapt, certain recipes of some of the things traditionally made on Purim. The most famous would have to be the Hamantashen (literally, "Haman's hat"). These are small triangular cookies that have a prune or fig jam filling in the middle. They were extremely popular in our family!
The date we observed Purim was so different from most holidays. Christmas is always on December 25, Thanksgiving falls on the 4th Thursday of November, Independence Day always on the 4th of July, and so on. Even Easter, although varying from year to year, is always observed on a Sunday. But not Purim! It could fall on a Sunday or Tuesday or some other day. And as for the month? It definitely arrives either in February or March, but even that varies. Purim is observed anywhere between the end of February to the end of March. One year Purim was on Thursday, March 8. The next year it fell on Sunday, February 24. The year after that it was also on Sunday, but not until March 16. The arrival of Purim varied so much... but that just made it more fun!
For a while, our family celebrated on New Year's Day with a gift exchange and cards. But we still were searching for another alternative. We wanted to have a special day set aside just for gift giving and having fun. After all, isn't that what Christmas is for most families? But Christmas, to us, seemed the wrong setting for a self-centered day of fun and play, and New Year's Day was not quite the day we were looking for either (we celebrated on New Year's Day as well, but it was a little bit different). Then, one day, when Dad was looking through the Bible for a daily verse (see: Home School / Focus on the Bible), he ran across the verses in the book of Esther that read, "And Mordecai wrote these things...to establish among them that they should celebrate yearly the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar... that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor... So they called these days Purim, after the name Pur (meaning: casting of lots)." ( Esther 9:20-26) This is the only place in the Bible where there is any mention of a day set aside for the giving gifts to one another.
Voila! The day we had been looking for! Feasting, joy, and gift giving... That's exactly what the day was made for! And so, that following year after researching a little bit to see when the next celebration of Purim was, we had our own version of a Purim celebration.
After that we always did our - rather large(!) - gift exchange on Purim. We also liked to serve special dishes for at least one or more of the meals on those days. We did not observe Purim according to the Jewish tradition, but we did adopt, or maybe I should say, adapt, certain recipes of some of the things traditionally made on Purim. The most famous would have to be the Hamantashen (literally, "Haman's hat"). These are small triangular cookies that have a prune or fig jam filling in the middle. They were extremely popular in our family!
The date we observed Purim was so different from most holidays. Christmas is always on December 25, Thanksgiving falls on the 4th Thursday of November, Independence Day always on the 4th of July, and so on. Even Easter, although varying from year to year, is always observed on a Sunday. But not Purim! It could fall on a Sunday or Tuesday or some other day. And as for the month? It definitely arrives either in February or March, but even that varies. Purim is observed anywhere between the end of February to the end of March. One year Purim was on Thursday, March 8. The next year it fell on Sunday, February 24. The year after that it was also on Sunday, but not until March 16. The arrival of Purim varied so much... but that just made it more fun!
Joshua getting ready for the big exchange. The older girls helped the younger ones to ensure that they had gifts for each member of the family while still managing to stay inside their budget. Joshua was extremely proud to be able to hand out his little gifts to everyone (he had little packaged figs for most everybody, and toys for some of his other siblings).
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Waiting to hand out the gifts.
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