Getting in my car to go to school during the holiday season, I flip the XM Radio dial past “Navidad,” ignore “A Bing Crosby Christmas” and skip over “Country Christmas.” There’s only one station I want to listen to – “Radio Hanukkah.”
“Radio Hanukkah,” an annual feature on channel 68 of XM Radio’s slate of holiday music, is available for the duration of Hanukkah, which is Dec. 20 to 28 this year. It plays a mix of both contemporary and traditional Hanukkah songs, such as the Maccabeats’ classic hit “Candlelight” and Eric Schwartz’s Outkast parody “Hanukkah Hey Ya.”
I distinctly remember the first time I listened to “Radio Hanukkah” a couple years ago. I was concerned about how a radio station dedicated specifically to Hanukkah music could survive with the lack of famous Hanukkah songs (only “I Had a Little Dreidel” and “Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah” come to mind), but there was no need to worry.
There’s actually a wide variety of songs on “Radio Hanukkah,” most of them falling into two distinct categories: the upbeat, unintentionally funny songs with phrases like “oy vey” by artists with names like Hanukkah Homeboy and the funereal songs with old, rabbi-like men chanting in Hebrew. Both are a joy to listen to.
Yesterday, though, when I was listening to the station, there was one song that didn’t fit into either category. Caroline, or Change’s “The Hanukkah Party” was possibly the worst song I’ve ever heard. It starts with traditional lines like “Hanukkah oh Hanukkah/Oh Dreidel and Menorah!/We celebrate it even though/It isn’t in the Torah!”
After that, the song takes a turn for the worse. There’s an inexplicable interpolation of “America the Beautiful,” the candle-lighting prayer for Hanukkah and a couple of uncalled for racial slurs. This one song, however, is the only oddball I’ve encountered in my many hours of listening to the usually wonderful mix of songs.
Although “Radio Hanukkah” is the greatest thing to happen in Jewish history since the Maccabees themselves, I do feel guilty when I listen to it. That’s because “Radio Hanukkah” replaces the Spa channel and I hate to think of all of the spas around the country that subject their customers, who are trying to relax, to “The Latke Song.”
While “Radio Hanukkah” may not be suited for taking a soak in a bath (unless, of course, that bath is actually a Mikveh), it provides the ideal soundtrack for the Festival of Lights pretty much anywhere else you go. It’s the kind of radio station that makes me want to get stuck in the endless line on Whittier Blvd. in the mornings. “Radio Hanukkah” is like tasty Sufganyot — worth savoring.
