Host: Hanukkah’s the festival of lights. Author Susie Fishbein sets this table aglow with Jewish tradition.
The eight day celebration of Hanukkah commemorates the victory of the Jews over their oppressors in ancient Israel.
Susie: Returning to this second temple, they found the Menorah with just a small vial of oil that should have really lasted for a day and the miracle was that the Menorah was lit for eight days which was the amount of time needed to produce another batch of it. So Hanukkah got the name the festival of lights and in playing upon that theme, we set our table aglow with all of these gorgeous blue glass, different sized vases that we dropped votives into.
Blue seems to be a very traditional color for the Hanukkah holiday maybe that’s because there’s blue in the Israeli flag. It certainly looks gorgeous on the table. If you take our glassware for an example, we have these exquisite $300.00 glasses from Bergdorf’s and we’ve used them with a $4.00 glass that we picked up at Daffy’s and because the blues kind of all work together and they’re not exactly matching and the styles of the glasses are not matching but use what you have and use it all together and you see that it really works.
Host: Water bottles and wine bottles even reflect the monochromatic color scheme.
Susie: My good friends Larry Sexton from Atlas Florists and Rene Ara, the party planner helped me design this table and they sourced the dishes for me. They’re just very inexpensive blue glass plates that can be gotten at any Target or K-Mart kind of a store and you can use any kind of clear glass charger.
This is a really gorgeous table and we just thought the table was just too beautiful to cover. So what we did instead is we took just these very simple inexpensive strips of mylar. It comes like ribbons wrapped on spools and just kind of made a lattice over some of the table. If you don’t have a beautiful table, you could just lay a table cloth out and then lay these mylar strips over your tablecloth and it’ll end up looking like a beautiful wrapped present.
Host: And Susie carries the gift wrap theme to the place settings.
Susie: Gift giving is not a traditional part of Hanukkah but it’s certainly become a cultural part and ask any kid and they’ll tell you the best part of Hanukkah is they get presents for eight days. So focusing on that part of the holiday, what we decided to do was to elevate our place settings. Very very simply just taking a piece of square Styrofoam that you can get at any arts and crafts supplier even from a florist and using very simple straight pins, wrapping mylar around it, and wrapping it like a present.
Host: Susie has a fresh take on the more traditional aspect of Hanukkah as well by turning the focal point of the holiday into the focal point of the table.
Susie: The Menorah is a religious article and the tradition is to light it in your window so that people from the outside can see that this holiday is happening and you generally light it with candles or with oil. What we decided to do in a very playful way is to make it the floral centerpiece on our table and just cut off some rose heads and stuck them in each of the cups that would normally hold the oil.
Host: The festive take on traditional elements continues with dreidle in place of napkin rings.
Susie: The dreidle is a spinning top that’s inscribed with different letters that mean different things and depending on what it falls on, you win a jackpot and kids love this. Over the years, my family has collected all different kinds of dreidles, plastic, wood, silver, brass, and I love breaking all of them out for the holiday and in this table it kind of works nicely. You can even rest each person’s place card at their table and I love the look of using and mixing and matching all the different ones that you have.
I feel that when you’re having your friends and your family around you for the holidays, it’s kind of nice to put the time and the though into what you’re doing on your table and you should be having fun with it. These are things that you’re making memories for your family and your guests for a very long time to come.