Even though I didn’t grow up celebrating Hanukkah my wife Rosey did. So ever since our girls were born we started celebrating the Holiday —lighting the Menorah and reciting the prayer— together as a family. We also celebrate Christmas and all the traditions of decorating the tree, the Advent Calendar with stockings and presents opened on Christmas Day too.

But there is something about the ritual of celebrating Hanukkah and lighting the Menorah that I look forward to now.

Blessing everyone with love and peace and celebrating the triumph of light over darkness is something we all – no matter what religious affiliation – can celebrate and wish for.

Celebrating the ritual for eight nights in a row provides comfort and hope. Doing it together with our family and honoring the time together in a meaningful way makes me proud. I’ve watched the girls go from holding a candle for the first time to leading the recital of the prayer.

I also realized that Hanukkah holds an unexpected deeper personal connection for me.

You see, a long time ago sometime around this time of year is when something very dark happened to me and my family. My father left us. When I was 6 years old in the dark of night, sometime in the month of December, he got in his car and drove away. And never came back.

The night was as dark as it was sad, and frightening. But there were still a few lights in the sky of faraway stars. The only thing you can do is cast a wish upon them to hope there was something out there in the Universe that could help you.  Maybe not right now I realized as things were very bad and the stars were very far away, but in the future, at some point down the road sure would be appreciated.

Many years later when I began celebrating Hanukkah I realized I never knew exactly when the Holiday started.  Just that it was around the same time of year as when my father left. When I found out that the start date of Hanukkah each year is variable falling sometime in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I realized it was also something memorable that occurs during a period of time and not on a definitive date.

It’s fluid in form and function which is why the usual feeling of loss, sadness, and uncertainty that I normally feel this time of year has been replaced with the love and light and happiness that the Hanukkah tradition has brought to my life.

There is a celebration of light over darkness for me this time of year. Even though the exact memory of standing in the cold darkness of the night sky of my childhood remains, the light of the candles of the Menorah now shines brighter in its place.