Why we celebrate Hanukkah

For those of you who do not know this, Jason and I are not Jewish. With that being said, we celebrate Hanukkah. Not because we want to be disrespectful, but because of Jason's first wife. She was Jewish until the day she passed away. His kids used to go over to her parents every year and celebrate with them, but after we petitioned for me to be allowed to adopt them they stopped all contact with the kids. It was honestly more heartbreaking for us than anything, especially considering I was just doing what their daughter had asked. That's a whole other story though! The point is when we heard they didn't want them for Hanukkah this year we told the kids we would celebrate it! Now, how do two Christian people celebrate something like this? We googled it. Seriously I was up until around 2 am trying to figure out what is socially acceptable to do for Hanukkah and it turns out it's a lot like Christmas. By that I mean, no two traditions were the same, but they all had the same intent. Since this is our first year celebrating we wanted to make sure all nine children knew the history behind this holiday, much like Christmas we were able to find several Hanukkah books targeted at children. We have been reading one everyday and enjoying the knowledge we are gain. Even though only half of our nine children are part Jewish we felt it was important to celebrate as a family, but didn't want to get gifts every single night. We decided to just have eight nines of family nights and to incorporate what their mom had always done-bake a different cookie every single night. My intent when marrying Jason was not to replace their mom and I don't want to take away any of the few memories they have with her so it was important to me to know what her traditions were. She never once bought her kids gifts for Hanukkah, instead she had no phone nights where she spent the time instead with her children doing crafts, playing games, watching family movies, or doing anything else her children wanted to do. We adopted that tradition and the family favorite tradition of having a party on the last night. This may be my first year doing this, but I wanted to do it right. This is a very special holiday especially for our four children who think of it as one of the only things they have left of their mom. Overtime some of the traditions may change, but I know they will remember how hard their dad and I worked to make sure they had these memories. To all of my Jewish followers, happy Hanukkah.