What's blue and white and marketed all over?

The answer is Hanukkah — and most every goy (Hebrew for non-Jew) knows that.

But if you're among those goyim (plural of goy) who believe Hanukkah is the most important Jewish celebration of the year — well, you're wrong.

With all those oversized menorahs and plastic dreidels, it's little wonder that so few know the truth about this particular Jewish celebration.

"Hanukkah has always been a minor holiday, not on par with the Jewish New Year, the Day of Atonement and not even on par with other high holidays," said Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, who studies the commercialization of Hanukkah in the United States.

In fact, Hanukkah is not even mentioned in the Torah, the Jewish Bible. The holiday, whichcommemorates a Jewish military victory against the Syrians in 167 BCE, was not canonized until some 400 years later. Although Jews have long celebrated the holiday as a victory against assimilation into the Syrian empire, Hanukkah was always a lower-tier festival.

Why then do Jews celebrate this holiday like it were — say, for example — the birth of a Messiah?

"The Jews in the United States have felt this rivalry with Christmas for the last 100 years," said Plaut. "And that has brought about a transformation — I call it the 'Americanization of Hanukkah' — which involves making it a highly commercialized holiday."

Plaut, who is writing a book about Jewish identity seen through what he calls a "Christmas mirror," believes that Hanukkah's 20th century growth from minor to major holiday is a result of America's religious freedom and its run-away consumer culture.

Historically, he said, European Jews always felt overwhelmed by Christmas. In response, they either embraced it — much like some Jews embraced the Hellenic-Syrian culture, which the Jewish militants rejected centuries ago. Or they rejected it — shutting themselves inside their houses with their families in the "Old Country" (the contemporary equivalent of Chinese food and a movie, a custom born in mid-century America).

It was in the "Old Country" — Germany, to be precise — that Jews began to relate differently to Christmas. As well-to-do Jews assimilated into German society, they warmed to Christmas — exchanging gifts, hosting elaborate Christmas dinners and even bringing decorative trees into their homes. Far from ditching Hanukkah, they merely accepted Christmas as a cultural event.

According to Plaut, Theodor Herzl — the father of modern Zionism and the establishment of Israel — once invited Vienna's Chief rabbi over to his house with a Christmas tree in full view. What's more, the origins of "Chrismakkuh" — the contemporary merging of Christmas with Hanukkah — lie in Germany. The term "Weihnukkah" a term which employs the German words for "Holy Night," was invented to make light of the Jewish adoption of Christmas.

Many German Jewish families carried their affinity for Christmas to the United States. In big American cities with large Jewish populations, Jews celebrated their secular version of Christmas with holiday wreaths on their doors and trees in their homes. In the early 1900s, one prominent San Francisco family served a slightly-less-than-kosher suckling pig at a holiday meal, said Plaut.

As American Jews grew more comfortable in their religious identity, a change took place. Hanukkah acquired the trappings of Christmas — with its own official colors (blue and white) and a tradition of gift giving (with some families giving eight gifts, one for every night of the holiday).

In a 1931 how-to book cited by Plaut, entitled "What Every Jewish Woman Should Know," Jews are instructed that their children "should be showered with gifts, Hanukkah gifts, as a perhaps primitive, but effective means of making them immune against envy of the Christian children and their Christmas."

Today, Hanukkah is treated by many — Jews and non-Jews alike — as something like a Jewish Christmas: Big, bold and laden with not only importance, but gifts.

Only, plenty of Jews refuse to convert Hanukkah into a Jewish Christmas.

"From my perspective, Hanukkah is a minor holiday — and that's the way it is," said Rabbi Marvin Goodman, of the Peninsula Sinai Congregation in Foster City. "Hanukkah is a holiday to be celebrated at home with your family, a holiday to celebrate the religious freedoms that we have now and also to insure that we maintain those freedoms. ... If we commercialize it, then the potential for the holiday is tremendously undermined."

Unabashed in his stance, Goodman is not afraid that his decision may strike some Jews as unpopular.

"I've got to worry about a higher authority than if somebody should tell I'm a Hanukkah Grinch," he said.

Sara Russell, of Moss Beach, also gets a little Grinchy come December, eshewing Hanukkah presents altogether. But Russell, the daughter of a rabbi, believes that's the best way to preserve her Jewish faith. Married to a Unitarian, she has resolved the "December dilemma" — the conflict between Christmas and Hanukkah — by focusing on her faith's traditions: Playing the spinning top game known as dreidel, frying up the potato pancakes known as latkes and, most importantly, lighting the menorah to commemorate what Jews believe to be the miracle of Hanukkah.

"Hanukkah is not about presents," said Russell. "If you turn Hanukkah into looking Christmas-y, that's not what it's about, so why bother?"

Rabbi Yossi Marcus, an Orthodox rabbi from the Chabad of the North Peninsula, is not about making Hanukkah "Christmas-y" either, but he doesn't mind the holiday's recently acquired high profile.

"I don't see why Hanukkah should be kept minor — especially in these days when most Jews don't even have a menorah," said Marcus. "Don't worry whether it's traditional or not traditional. Times change and if this is something that's positive to the world, who cares if that's not the way that we celebrated in Europe or in the Middle East thousands of years ago."

In an age of invention and adaptation, contemporary religion becomes a hodge-podge of what people make it. And so, many Jews continue to innovate — adapting familiar holiday themes to match their contemporary outlook.

The Shalom Center, a Reconstructionist Rabbinical Center in Philadelphia, is urging Jews to consider the "Green Menorah Covenant" — a pact to make one day's worth of gasoline last eight days.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives — an interfaith organization with left wing politics co-founded by Berkeley Rabbi Michael Lerner — has preached that both Hanukkah and Christmas should be celebrated with anti-commercial gifts, such as hand-made items and presents from socially responsible companies.

This year, Adina Allen, a 23-year-old Jew in Berkeley, wants to take a stand against the commercialization of Hanukkah so she's avoiding the mall altogether and giving her friends and family the gift of time.

"We don't need to make a list of 50 things and run down one another in the mall and push each other out of the way to get a PlayStation 3," she said. "Those are all substitutes for what we really need.

"What we really need," she said, "is love and time with our families."

The Peninsula Jewish Community Center celebrates its annual "Latkepalooza," a community Hanukkah celebration, at 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at PJCC, 800 Foster City Blvd, Foster City. For more information, visit http://www.pjcc.org.

The Chabad House of the North Peninsula is sponsoring a Menorah lighting at the Burlingame Caltrain Station at 6 p.m. onTuesday.

Staff writer Michael Manekin can be reached at (650) 348-4331 or by e-mail at mmanekin@sanmateocountytimes.com.