A few months back, I wrote an article complaining about how many waking hours of Purim we spend in the car. It’s almost all of them, we figured out. But in my excitement to complain about Purim, I totally forgot how many waking hours of Chanukah we spend in the car.

To be fair, it’s not all day. It’s basically just this one-to-two-hour window of the day, but for an entire week.

There’s a lot of running around on Chanukah. We have to go to work on Chanukah and yeshiva has to be in session on Chanukah, and while that’s a nice concept, at a certain time everyone suddenly drops everything and starts running home—all at once. It’s like the typical Erev Yom Tov rush, but it’s eight nights in a row. And it’s at the same time that everyone else in the world is rushing home in order to celebrate rush hour.

And everyone is driving slowly because they have to look at every menorah and comment. “Look! They lit already… They lit already… They lit already… I didn’t even know they were Jewish and they lit already.”

First of all, someone you know always gets married on Chanukah. And it will be someone close to your family, so you’ll have to work out with your rav exactly when and where you have to light and possibly wait and then jump into the car and ignore all speed limits. Unless you’re lighting in the car, in which case you don’t want to ignore any speed limits. And every single person at the wedding will get a different psak from their rav, so no two people will do the same thing. It will be something to make small talk about while you’re waiting for things to happen.

“We’re not eating until after the chasunah.”

“We’re sleeping in the hall tonight.”

“We slept in the car.”

“We lit all the candles that the parents were supposed to use to walk their kids down.”

“We’re sneaking home during the chuppah and hoping they don’t call us up for a bracha.”

“We lit a row of yahrtzeit candles at home this morning.”

I’m not sure why the baalei simcha can’t just write on the invitation, ‘This is what our rav says to do.’ If a couple gets married during Sefirah, everyone goes by the chosson’s rav. No one shows up in earmuffs.

They definitely didn’t call the wedding start time late enough that everyone can just come after they light. That they couldn’t do for some reason. The wedding could have been shorter! No one minds. We could have combined some things. We could have had the shmorg during the chuppah at the edges of the room where the single friends usually stand. We could have danced the chosson out of the badekin and immediately down the aisle, instead of dropping him off at the family room to finish getting dressed. We could have told all the people who were getting brachos at the chuppah that they were getting brachos at the chuppah so they could maybe sit in the front row, instead of in the dead center of some row at the back of the room that is seated entirely with people with really long legs.

But the wedding is only one night, unless you’re invited to all the sheva brachos. There are also family parties and shul parties, and if you add up how many shuls you’re a member of and how many families you’re a part of, you somehow get more than eight.

And then besides for Chanukah parties for yourself, every one of your children has multiple parties that you have to drive them to, most of them at the same time as other kids’ parties and also your shul parties. No one can get through Chanukah without a chart, written on a large piece of paper with a massive oil stain.

“How does one kid have four Chanukah parties? Are these all for school?”

“No, this one is for chesed club.”

“Chesed club can’t give everyone rides?”

“I don’t have any parties,” your teenager is saying. “I have mesibas.”

A mesiba is a party where everyone is expected to stay seated, so they don’t get a repeat of what happened on Purim.

The party is usually at the rebbi’s house on the one night that he doesn’t have a family thing. And every rebbi lives on a narrow street with no lights, and their bedroom windows are in front of the house so they light in the back. Which is also where the entrance is. And you’re like, “Is he even home? Did you get the night wrong?” And he doesn’t have a house number.

I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of people grumble around the Yomim Tovim that there are too many days in a row that we can’t do melacha, but we don’t appreciate that there are just as many days that we don’t have to drive anywhere. Whereas basically every rabbinic holiday we end up spending in the car. Even Lag B’Omer. There’s no halacha to do so on Lag B’Omer; we just make up reasons to spend extra time in the car.

“What are you talking about? There’s a minhag to play baseball!”

Is it a minhag to drive to play baseball?

Point is, when you think about Chanukah, you picture your family cozying up in front of the candles and eating latkes in their footsie pajamas, and there’s snow on the windowsill, and you’re dipping donuts in your hot cocoa, but really Chanukah is about being cold and wet and driving around in the dark on icy roads with zero visibility, going, “They lit already, they lit already… Which one’s your rebbi’s house?”

“How am I supposed to know? I only see him in yeshiva!”

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].