Yes, Hanukkah fireworks. Don’t wait to buy them — get your fireworks while they are plentiful and perhaps soon, on sale. Trust me: buying explosives over the Internet is more difficult than you might imagine.
One of our favorite family traditions is lighting sparklers and small fireworks in the snow to celebrate the Festival of Lights. Is there anything more natural for Minnesota’s frozen chosen? Here are a few tips to make your Hanukah nights with flammables a success:
Light your sparklers early, with plenty of time before the kids need to go to sleep. Thankfully in Minnesota, this is an easy task. I’ve found if you start it too late, the kids get too excited to go to sleep. By lighting our fireworks before dinner, our children get excited and we end up discussing Hanukah the rest of the night.- Plan ahead, get things set up before you head out with a box of sparklers and the grill lighter. If there isn’t any snow yet, make sure you have a bucket of water handy to stick the used sparkler sticks into; they get very hot and an easy safety step before you head outside will make things more enjoyable.
- Keep the fireworks dry; this seems like a no-brainer. You’d be surprised how a fresh blanket of snow might inspire you to create letters, patterns, anything by sticking sparklers in an upright pattern. Feel free to be creative, just keep in mind that once they get wet, they won’t light and you will need to dispose of them properly.
- Watch for ice, and if you are going to have young kids hold sparklers or look at them, make sure you have a safe spot for them to sit and/or watch. Safety first.
- Share! Our neighbors come out (fireworks in the winter, who wouldn’t?) the kids get to talk to them about Hanukah, we get to explain that it is not the Jewish Christmas, but it is fun and we bring enough hot cocoa to share, with Kosher marshmallows.
So shake things up a little this year, add our tradition to your own, but I’m telling you get the fireworks now and remember where you put them by the time Hanukah rolls around!
Melissa Ginzburg spends her days in lightsaber battles with little boys dressed as Superman, Spiderman, and the Hulk. When she isn’t fighting for interstellar domination it’s usually because the children are sleeping.
