I will start by saying that last year, we did not one thing for Chanukah. No latkes, no dreidel spins, no menorah brought out of storage. I found that this approach left me with a "felt absence" so this year I came up with the following.

There are eight nights in Chanukah and we have me, Mr. A, and Little Mr. A. We also do a lot of Christmas gifting, and both men have birthdays within two weeks of December 25, so I felt it was important to make a rule that my Chanukah gifting scheme had to involve ONLY MODEST GIFTS.

I made a list of categories and asked us each to select two categories, and to give MODEST gifts to the other two people on their assigned nights. The categories were:

• Something to read
• Something you made
• Something to eat
• Something involving light
• Something you found (no buying, no making)
• Something from before the year you were born
• Something involving the future
• Something to play with
• Something for outdoors
• Something involving water
• Something involving numbers
• A practical tool of some kind

Mr. A spoke up for "read" and "light" and LMA chose "eat" and "from before the year you were born." I chose something I made and something I found, but am ditching "found" because I haven't found anything cool.

Anyway, we're lighting candles every night and perhaps making latkes and sufganyot (though the 90 and 88-year-old Brooklyn-raised Jews in our family insist that no one anywhere has ever heard of sufganyot), but we're each taking one night to give gifts to the other two on nights 1, 2, and 3, taking a break on night 4, then each taking one more night of 5, 6, and 7. 8th night is another break because this year the 8th night falls on Christmas and by that night, we're gifted out.

I feel I must use allcaps for MODEST because Mr. A is an extravagant gift-giver and even though he won't see this post, I'm sending him mental signals to keep the gifts MODEST.