When I was a kid, I lived in a neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish. Every year, as December rolled around, I was fascinated by the few holiday lights and Christmas trees that appeared sporadically in neighboring apartment buildings. I have vivid memories of visiting our upstairs neighbors to see their Christmas tree with its amazing bubbling lights.

But then our turn would come, when we would walk the short block and a half to my grandma and grandpa’s apartment, where the house would be warm with the fragrance of frying latkes. The mahogany dining table would be covered with the usual white tablecloth, but instead of the usual Friday night shabbos candlesticks, there would appear the beautiful Chanuka menorah.

Every year, Grandma would repeat the exciting Chanuka story: how, millennia ago, the evil Greeks conquered the Land of Israel and desecrated the Holy Temple in Jerusalem as they tried to make the Jews worship the Greek gods. Fortunately, a band of Jewish patriots, led by Judah Maccabee, took back Jerusalem and freed the Temple. As the priests reconsecrated the Temple, they discovered that there was only one day’s supply of holy oil for the Eternal Light, while it would take eight days to consecrate more oil. But – a miracle happened, and the oil lasted for eight days!

So every year, Jews celebrate the Festival of Lights, Chanuka (or Hanukkah – you’ll find both spellings are common), on the 25th day of Kislev, a month in the Hebrew calendar. For eight days we light candles in the menorah, starting with one candle on the first night, and then adding an additional candle on each of the succeeding seven nights.

We eat fried foods, indulging in the oil that was part of our miracle. The most familiar Chanuka dish is latkes, fried potato pancakes, scented with onion and topped with sour cream or applesauce.

And we exchange small gifts, the most common of which is gelt, chocolate coins covered in a golden foil. And all play the dreidel game: spinning a four-sided top, each side bearing a Hebrew letter that begins each of the words that mean “A Great Miracle Happened Here.” We bet with our gelt on each spin, since each letter that turns up when the top falls has a different weight: one means “put two coins in the pot”; another means “take half the pot”; another wins the entire pot; and one loses you the turn. It’s so simple even the babies play.

I’m grown up now, and Grandma and Grandpa are long gone. But the holiday celebration remains vital, and I’ve lit my menorah in many places over the years. Perhaps the most memorable comes from the time I spent in the Canadian Arctic, where my son and I were one of the two Jewish families in an overwhelmingly Inuit community.

Our two families had an annual Chanuka party for the community, where we told the Chanuka story and lit the candles in the menorah. We served latkes and gifted gelt to a crowd of Inuit, who appreciated the tale of lasting light in a place where there is very little in December. Some of the elders even remembered living in iglus, where light and heat were provided by a stone kulluk filled with seal oil. And all loved playing dreidel, laughing or moaning at the drop of the top.

And that’s Chanuka for me: warmth in the cold, light in the dark, and good greasy food.