Oh my god, I just remembered, it’s Purim. Seriously, already? I feel like it was just Simchas Torah! Boy did that winter go by fast. But the question is, are YOU ready for Purim? Did you choose your costume, buy presents for all the kids on the block, bake your dry, crumbly, never-very-delicious hamantaschen? No? Well COME ON, it starts tomorrow night!! It’s Purim eve, eve! Crap, I totally forgot and now I’ll never find a perfect queen Esther costume this late. And I don’t have time to bake hamantaschen before kickboxing class tonight, maybe I’ll do it while I watch “Better Call Saul”.
Because just when we thought the winter holiday season was over, kids, just when you finally put away the Christmas lights because the first daffodils are blooming… Really, that’s the sign to put them away, when you see the first daffodil, you put away the xmas stuff. Yes, it’s true, it’s in the bible in Ecclesiastes, remember? “To everything there is a season, turn, turn, etc., and a time to every purpose under heaven, and when the first daffodil shall bloometh, thou shalt fill thy Rubbermaid tubs with thy tinsel and animated reindeer?” That first yellow bloom is the heavenly command.
And now, for spring, the holiday season is BACK. I know, Valentine’s Day is now just a fading, disappointed memory. All the unsold clearance valentine’s candy, like the red and pink wrapped Hershey’s kisses, and red valentine’s day marshmallow Peeps have been dumped or fed to beef cattle to fatten ‘em up for grilling season. And the onslaught of pink and yellow and lavender is on in full-force, the Peeps are out in numbers, chocolate bunnies are multiplying like, well, bunnies! And jars of gefilte fish and boxes of matzo are filling the supermarket end-cap shelves, it’s time, spring Holiday Season!
But it all starts with Purim. The Jewish festival celebrating something about a queen named Esther and a bad guy named Haman and some destroyed temple, and some king, and something else…and oh crap, I don’t remember. I tried to look it up but it was more than a paragraph and then I got all distracted by something on BuzzFeed. And during the Purim festivities they tell the story of those guys, Esther and Haman and the rest, and every time they mention the evil Haman, you’re supposed to make a shit-ton of noise and stomp your feet and crank these little noisemakers that they give the kids, to drown out his name. Sort of like protesters at a Trump rally. And then the thugs come along and kill them. History really does repeat itself, doesn’t it?