i take shopping very seriously.

very, very seriously.

so when i tell people that the black eye i'm sporting now is a shopping injury, the next set of questions i inevitably get is:

"wow. so did you get the xbox360 after all?"

and

"so how bad does the other chick look?"

let's face it. i'm a badass. well ... as badass-ish as a wimpy white jewish girl can be around christmas time.

being jewish during the holiday season is a struggle that every jewish kid faces during his/her lifetime. most of us outgrow being red and green with envy. but some of us look longingly at the pretty lights every december wishing that chanukah had something just a little more fat and jolly.

really, can any holiday - however imaginative - compete with an overweight chubby guy who flies around on a sled for one night, sneaks into people's houses, eats a plate of chocolate chip cookies, and leaves a bunch of presents underneath a tree that was severed from our dwindling forests to decorate someone’s living room for a week?

not even jelly doughnuts and deep fried potatoes can hold a candle (or eight of 'em) to that magic.

for those of us (un)fortunate enough to have experienced (read: suffered through) a hebrew school education, the fact that chanukah, at its very core, is actually not a gift-giving holiday makes the whole jewish gift exchange feel much more like a "jewish comeback" to the christmas season.

chanukah is hardly one of the biggest jewish holidays, yet it is perhaps the most well-known. in essence, chanukah is exactly like every other jewish holiday: they hated the jews; they tried to kill us off; we won; let's eat.

naturally, i don't mind the gift-giving component of chanukah. like every other mainstream kid who grew up in america, they two are nearly synonymous for me. and i love the shopping element of the holidays. (hey, it is important to know one's strengths.) but i do sometimes wish that chanukah was celebrated for the holiday it really is, not what every kid in america wishes it was.

and then that thought quickly passes.

maybe what the holiday season is really about is the interaction associated with gift-giving: kinship and power; taste and insight; symbolism and values. maybe the key element to the psychology of gift-giving is basic human reciprocation: 'i help you and you help me.' maybe the whole purpose of the holidays is a way to forge bonds with family, friends, and strangers as in the days when gift-giving served a useful purpose when there was no state to keep the peace with police or militia.

or maybe, christmanukawanzza is a corporate commercialization conspiracy in which customers are consumed by greed and materialism creating a commercial pollution at the cost of authentic spirituality.

and if that's the case, then i'm in the right place.

because, as an up-and-coming business school student (*who has yet to be accepted anywhere), it is fundamentally important to know that the survival of many businesses are dependent on the holiday season profits, and frankly, it is my patriotic duty to be as helpful as possible to these fellow americans who are just trying to make a decent living.

so i shop. and i buy. and i give. because maybe i'm a sucker for whatever-holiday spirit. i love the fuzzy feeling i get when i've given someone exactly the right gift. i suppose that as a jewish kid in a non-jewish country, the christmas season is one i'll struggle with for the rest of my life.

but you know what? i'm okay with chanukah. besides, i don't need an excuse to sit on some guy's lap. (i can do that all year round.) and i suppose that if you push me to say it, my connection to the jews who survived deep-seeded hatred and persecution is probably more profound than my affinity to shiny lights.

and really, who needs honey-baked ham when you can have deep fried potatoes?

and let's be honest. this badass didn't get her black eye in some heroic feat to grab an xbox360 for her boyfriend's big-last-night-of-chanukah-present.

let's just say that my face and the corner of a cabinet door in a beauty-supply store had a run-in with each other.

and my right eye lost the battle. (but you should see how i took out that cabinet.)

so much for beauty supply.