Happy Holidays from PlainTalk

PlainTalk will be on a little holiday sabbatical until the new year. Thank you to those who sent in holiday decor photos for our contest, and congratulations to J. Murphy of Des Plaines, the winner of a $50 gift card.

The winning photo - I bet there's a lot of snow on that lawn tonight! :)

I hope whatever you do for the next week brings you tremendous satisfaction and joy, in the shape of lively family gatherings, religious services, sumptuous meals, gift exchanges, nights on the town with friends, or the simple delight of doing nothing much at all - sleeping in, curling up with a book, savoring cookies for breakfast, and not setting the alarm clock for a few days. If you are in the service sector and will be working while much of the country stays home, I thank you for the meals you'll serve, the sick you'll attend, the fires you'll put out, the planes you'll fly, the hotel rooms you'll clean, and the groceries you'll bag. Mostly, I hope the new year brings us all of more comfort, less anxiety and plenty to celebrate.

Best wishes from all of us here at the Des Plaines Public Library. We look forward to serving you in 2010.

The photo above is a view of the Christmas Around the World/Holidays of Light exhibit currently on display at Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry. I was privileged to spend the day there with friends this week and the holiday decorations are spectacular.

Show Us Your Bling!!! Holiday Photo Contest

This is such a great time of year to commute through Des Plaines because I really get a kick out of everyone's holiday decorations. Giant, inflatable Santas, icicle lights, glowing manger scenes, strings of Star of David garland, polar bears - no homemade snowmen yet, but I'm sure they're coming, if Tom Skilling has anything to say about it.

So, we'd like to make you a deal. If you've got an awesome holiday display at home, send us some digital pictures of it, along with your name, address and email address or phone. We're going to put them all together into a video slideshow here on our Web site AND - here's the good part for you: we'll put all the entries into the proverbial hat and draw a winner on 12/23/09. That winner will receive a $50 gift certificate to the Des Plaines restaurant of their choice. Our holiday gift to you.

Get those photos taken tonight and email them to me, Karen McBride, Web Services Librarian:
kmcbride@dppl.org

We will accept photos until NOON on Wednesday, 12/23/09. Winner will be drawn at 5 PM on 12/23 and notified via email or phone. We will use all of the submitted photos on our Web site - however, we will not identify the home address of each photo, for your safety and privacy.

Please - share your photos with us and ask your friends and neighbors to do the same. It's been a tough year for a lot of people. Let's spread a little holiday cheer and remind ourselves that Des Plaines is a great city full of terrific people.

Chanukah Blues

Chanukah begins this night (Friday, December 11, 2009), with the first candle of the menorah being lit before sundown. I have a slight confession to make - being Roman Catholic, I'm prone to confessions - I wish Chanukah would become a holiday that everyone shared!

My first interest in Chanukah was purely surface level: I love the color scheme. Very shallow of me, I know, but the blues and whites of Chanukah, often with a touch of silver, are lovely to my eyes and much more appealing than red and green. (Would you ever wear red and green together in March or September? I think not.) When it came time to decorate the outside of my home for Christmas for the first time, I bought all blue lights. My Irish/Czech mother drove up and said, "It looks like Chanukah." I was secretly rather pleased.

From Jewish friends and colleagues through the years, I have learned more about the meaning of Chanukah, the history and significance underneath the pretty blue and white. I never bought into the glib, "Chanukah is the Jewish Christmas" story I heard from non-Jewish sources. Here's a "Chanukah in a nutshell" definition from the Chabad Web site, which seems like a very extensive resource if you are interested in Judaism:

"Chanukah -- the eight-day festival of light that begins on the eve of Kislev 25 -- celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality."

The holiday brings an emphasis on family celebration, faith, and - hooray - yummy treats for sharing. Here's a link to the Chabad site for Chanukah if you'd like to learn more. Chabad and F.R.E.E. in neighboring Niles also has Chanukah information on its Web site: check it out.

You may be of a completely different faith tradition, an agnostic, even an atheist, but I imagine most of us would still like to see light conquer darkness in our world and an end to the focus on material possessions which doesn't seem to get us anywhere. We have library materials on Chanukah for both adults and children: click here for a listing from our catalog, and remember you can search and borrow from all the other libraries in our consortium, too.

I wish our Jewish patrons, library employees and community residents a warm and blessed Chanukah. I know we recently had a comment about PlainTalk seemingly being a blog with a "Christian" outlook. I am only able to blog from my own knowledge base and human experience, but it is certainly never with an intent to make anyone else feel excluded or less valued. One thing I love about working at DPPL is that I share my work days with coworkers of many different faiths - Jewish, Muslim, and probably others of which I am not even aware. Lunchroom conversations also indicate that other coworkers are very comfortable not believing in a God of their choice. I appreciate that diversity, which more adequately reflects the world at large and which allows us to be a truly public library that serves everyone in our community, not just some.