Last update - 00:00 28/02/2007
Instant Purim - A holiday made in China
By Uri Misgav
In fifth grade, when my friend and I dressed up as ghostbusters, we found two large jerricans that we spray-painted yellow. Then we attached them to shoulder harnesses and screwed black plastic pipes into the openings of the cans. My teacher used markers to draw the requested red and black symbol - the product of an adventure movie that was popular at the time - on the white overalls we got from the clothing warehouse.
A year later, Hollywood did it again. Influenced by the success of the movie Amadeus, I longed to be Mozart for one day. My grandmother wove me a wig out of cotton balls and we attached buckles cut out of cardboard and covered with aluminum foil to the pointy black shoes I borrowed from one of the girls. All this did take place in the previous millennium, but it was only 20 years ago.
Purim has been, and remains, the holiday the children of Israel love most - but over the years the holiday experience has undergone a dramatic change. The vast majority of dressed-up children wear ready-made costumes, bought from stores that import them in cellophane wrapping while demanding steep prices for their mediation. King Ahasuerus reigned "from Hodu to Kush" (from India to what is often translated as Ethiopia), but the holiday that commemorates the downfall of his adviser Haman now marks the ascendancy of the Made in China kingdom.
Wigs, masks and disguise accessories cost a few dozen shekels, and a full costume starts at NIS 100. For a household with two or more children, these are not negligible expenses, even if the costumes are good and save the parents the effort of sewing and combining different elements to create the required disguise. But cost is not the only issue deserving consideration; more things are getting lost here aside from the money.
The first issue, which is quite evident, is connected to the loss of creativity in the preparation of a homemade costume - and, in its wake, the absence of common sense in the streets. Children, and their parents, need to be particularly strong and independent in order to rebel against the iron regime of this fashion of the masses.
The second issue, which is more significant and substantial, concerns the shortcut taken in holiday preparations. This is a discouraging phenomenon that also applies to other Jewish holidays, and is of course linked to this era's culture of instant gratification. Just as more people would rather buy a folding plastic sukkah than build one with their own hands, would prefer buying pomegranate seeds in a plastic container on Rosh Hashanah than removing the seeds from the whole fruit, or would rather pay someone to clean their house before Passover instead of scrubbing it themselves, so, too, the most endearing holiday of all has become an Instant Purim, with costumes made out of nylon and Purim baskets packed by food manufacturers and displayed next to the cashier in the supermarket.
The intention here is not to embark on a self-righteous lamentation or wallow in nostalgia, and in any case, the transformation of the holiday is hardly a capital crime. Nonetheless, there is room to ponder the ramifications of the diet that has been imposed on the holidays, whereby the process of preparing for them becomes emptied of content, shrinking down to the swiping of a credit card at a few locations. After all, there is an educational and practical logic to the rituals that precede the festive occasion itself. The expectation, the rising excitement, the labor and the effort - does anyone in Israel still bake hamantaschen at home anymore? - elevate the holiday. When it arrives suddenly, following a glance at the calendar and a brief round of shopping, it is likely to disappoint and leave behind a feeling of emptiness. When you add an increasing distancing of secular society from the traditional and religious components of the holidays, then sometimes, only a thin and pale version of the real thing is left.
Since there do not seem to be too many nations in the world with as rich and varied a range of holidays as we have, that is a real loss.