The most essential part of making Chanukah is lighting the menorah. Followed by—in order from most to least essential—doughnuts, playing dreidel, doughnuts, latkes, presents, chocolate shaped like money, doughnuts, and that party your shul makes where someone wins a gym membership. So you might as well do it right:

Where to Set It Up

Fire professionals say you should set up your candles at least 10 feet from anything flammable, such as window shades. Unfortunately, you have to put your menorah near the window, so what are you gonna do? I would say you should remove your window shades and move them to a safe area, such as where you’re going to be dancing. Then, when the candles go out each night, you can reinstall the drapes so you can go to bed.

That said, many families will leave their front window shades open so you can see their setup and know what to do for your own home. Feel free to press your face against the glass to get a good look. Especially as they’re lighting.

Your other option is to light your menorah outside, taking care to move and replant any bushes or trees that may present a fire hazard. Some people light in a fish tank, because there is no recorded instance of there ever being a fire in a fish tank. But just in case, you should remove all of the fish before you light.

Setting Up Your Table

Ideally, you want a table that doesn’t shake.—Most people use folding tables.—Those two sentences are unrelated.

Once you have a table, you need to take all the foil that you used to line the walls of your kitchen on Pesach that you were unsure of how to throw out—all those 10-foot lengths of bulletproof foil—and repurpose it into lining your entire living room. We don’t know what Yidden did before the invention of foil. Do non-Jews even buy foil? What do they use it for? They make big meals like twice a year.

Note that you don’t do anything like this for Shabbat candles. All your wife gets is a tray, and then you have a full Shabbat meal next to it.

Choosing a Menorah

There are a lot of decisions to make here. For example, do you want a menorah or a chanukiah? They look exactly the same to the naked eye, so make sure to ask the person at the store to point you to the right section. So he knows what kind of customer he’s dealing with. He will probably recommend you buy one of each.

Sure, some people will tell you that a menorah has seven branches, and a chanukiah has nine. But all the seforim call the thing that we light a menorah. So I say that maybe a menorah has branches, while a chanukiah has sports equipment, choo-choo trains, cats, soda cans, dreidels, and for some reason fire trucks. I am not sure what choo-choo trains have to do with Chanukah, and neither does the Taamei Minhagim.

Choosing What You’re Lighting

• OPTION #1: CANDLES

This is the preferred lighting method of kids. Candles are easier to light, because all you have to do is pick out pretty colors from the box, and then ask an adult to clean out yesterday’s debris and melt in today’s.

Plus, the kids get all excited about the candles, because fun fact: The different colors taste different.

A standard box comes with 44 candles, which is enough for one person for the entire Chanukah, provided no candles are broken. So you should probably check in the store, like with eggs. How is one candle broken if the entire box is standing-room only? Shouldn’t it be all or none?

• OPTION #2: OIL

In general, people prefer to use olive oil, because it played a big role in the story. The story isn’t about how the Chashmonaim could only find one lone candle that wasn’t broken—all the other candles had been cracked in half by the Greeks, in a mad spree, or by accident—and they could only find this one candle, and it was yellow. They checked through all the boxes. And to get new candles back then, it took 8 business days. You had to go to the honey farm, and get some beeswax, and then run, because you’d woken up all the bees… I actually don’t know how to make candles. For all I know, it might take eight days.

The main downside of oil is that somehow—and we blame science—it travels through all the layers of silver foil to make your table greasy. No matter how much foil you put down, your table will be covered in oil. This is another reason Chazal suggested we just light outside.

How to Light

First you need to bring a lit candle from the stove, which is nowhere near the front window of your house. Some people keep a lighter near their menorahs, but you have kids, so no thanks. You’d rather walk across your house really slowly with your hand in front to protect it from the wind. I have no idea how people who light outside pull this off. It’s hard enough to borrow fire on Yom Tov when it’s nice outside.

Once you’ve brought the fire to the lighting station, you’re going to need to stand there with the tiny candle burning down while everyone else gets their acts together. As soon as you give up and blow it out, they’ll be ready.

Once you’ve lit, you can sing “Maoz Tzur.” Many families join hands and dance, although you should not be dancing near the menorahs if your floor is any kind of shaky, which is just as well, because you probably shouldn’t be dancing near an open window. Especially not with your neighbor’s face pressed against it.

When you’re done, you can sit down, carefully, and enjoy the menorah from the relative comfort of your bulletproof-foil lined couch.

Happy Chanuk—Oh wait; mine went out.

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