Pickles At Chanukah

While I've written about the relatively new tradition of eating and tasting pickles during the holiday of Chanukah (or Hanukkah) plenty of times over the years, I decided to write the ultimate pickles at Chanukah blog post. Like many people, I'm pretty much stuck at home and my neighborhood during the pandemic and spend nearly all of my time with my kids or working. For something different to do, I want to spread some positivity over the holiday season. And to me, pickles are positive and are also fun and tasty. Therefore, besides telling as many friends and family about the pickles at Chanukah tradition as I can, I actually wrote this press release and sent it to dozens of websites, newspapers, pickle companies, synagogues/temples, and more. 

A Tangy Tasty (and New) Chanukah Tradition
 

While most Jewish traditions go back centuries and started in places like Israel or Egypt, you may not be familiar with a Chanukah tradition that began in 1998 in the mythical and historic city of San Diego. And it started by a misunderstanding. The students and staff of Hillel at San Diego State University ("SDSU") organized a Kosher Pickle Taste Test on a cool (for San Diego) December day. Hundreds of members of the SDSU community tasted a variety of pickles and rated their favorites. SDSU's student newspaper, The Daily Aztec, featured a medley of pictures of the event on its front page the next day with the caption, 'Students, faculty, alumni, and pickle men took part in the Chanukah tradition of pickle tasting yesterday on the north steps of the Free Speech Area." Naturally, when you think of free speech, you think of pickles! Based on the proximity of the event to Chanukah, at least one person at the Daily Aztec thought that pickles were an essential part of the holiday, ranking up there with lighting the menorah and spinning the dreidel.

 

Now, 22 years later, this humorous error actually has become a tradition for some of the people involved in the taste test. And those people spread the tradition to their family and friends. So this Chanukah, please keep this new tradition alive by eating pickles along with latkes and donuts (though probably not all at the exact same time). Dill, sweet, bread and butter, sour, half sour, or even gherkins. Any pickle will do. You can even try multiple types of pickles for your own pickle taste test this Chanukah!

Several places have shown interest in publishing some portion of this from various parts of the country, so I'm really excited. I also decided that instead of Sean's Ramblings becoming an all-pickle all the time blog, I would create a dedicated place for this. I'm happy to announce the brand new Pickles for Chanukah Facebook group. Even if you are in the delete Facebook crowd, it's perfectly okay to get all your pickles and pickles for Chanukah news on the page. For example, on Thursday, I posted a link to What Jew Wanna Eat's amazing Fried Pickle Latkes with Everything Bagel Ranch recipe. I could never make this, but it sounds delicious and goes perfect with trying pickles at Chanukah. 

With all of this written, if Good Morning America or The Today Show features a story about pickles at Chanukah, I'm definitely posting about it here!  

So if you celebrate Chanukah, have some pickles with your latkes/potato pancakes. Even if you don't celebrate Chanukah, sometime in December, buy two different types of pickles, taste them, and decide which is your favorite.

Please like the Facebook page/group and spread the word!