Tom Lehrer has given us so, so many immortal gifts. The songwriter, piano virtuoso, humorist, mathematician, college professor, Harvard graduate (he started his studies at the Ivy League institution at age 15) and general Renaissance man created hilarious hits like the cheeky “I Got It From Agnes,” the morbidly funny “Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park” and “The Masochism Tango,” which is both those things. He’s taught us “The Elements” to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance.” And he gave us one of the best Hanukkah songs ever written on this side of the ocean: “Hanukkah in Santa Monica.”
This year, singer Deborah Silver released a jazzy cover of the song, along with a delightful video filmed in, of course, Santa Monica, surrounded by the best Hanukkah inflatables and decor around, giving the song the excellent big band attention it has always deserved with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra. It’s an infectious and rousing cover from Silver’s holiday EP “Swingin’ Through the Holidays.” The Mississippi-born (or Mississippuh-born, if you’re Tom Lehrer on Yom Kippuh!) Jewish singer wears a dog tag for the Israeli hostages while lighting the candles by the sea, playing with inflatable dreidels at the beach, and bringing Hanukkah glitter and lights to the boardwalk. It really has me jonesing to light some candles by the sea myself.
The diverting rhyme in the song’s title should probably be attributed not to Lehrer but to Mickey Katz, famed clarinetist and progenitor of many a delightful humorous Yiddish-laden song. Katz was the father of famous actor and director Joel Grey and grandfather of “Dirty Dancing” legend Jennifer Grey (and a big source of inspiration for Jewish actor Jeff Goldblum), and he had an annual comedy show with that title, “Chanukah in Santa Monica,” first held in the West Coast city in 1962. Yet, according to Sarah Weinman’s truly fascinating must-read investigation of the song’s origin, it might not have been Katz who coined that name, but his events manager, Hal Zeiger.
“Hanukkah In Santa Monica” feels like it has been with us forever, but the song actually only dates back to the 1990s. It was then that author and radio personality Garrison Keillor coaxed Lehrer out of retirement to write several tunes, including “Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” for his radio show “Prairie Home Companion.” When introducing the show, Keillor commented how there was a dearth of good Hanukkah songs, probably because all the Jews were too busy writing all the best Christmas songs.
“There was thus a deplorable lacuna in the repertoire, which this song, a sort of answer to ‘White Christmas,’ was intended to remedy,” Lehrer mused. Some would argue it is indeed the perfect antithesis of the saccharine sweet “White Christmas” given to us by the Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin, a man who has written many a heartfelt American anthem. It’s a funny, tongue in cheek song about the Jewish American propensity, at least in old age, to spend the winter in warmer climes. If “White Christmas” lives in the spirit of the great American standards, then “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” lives in the spirit of the great Jewish American standard — a Borscht Belt tummler song. That sweet Yiddish pronunciation of Shavuos, which many American Jews now call by its Hebrew-ized name, Shavuot, feels almost like a wink to Mickey Katz.
Lehrer himself, still alive and kicking at 96 (pu pu pu kinehora) is a Jew whose family celebrated Christmas, or at least had a Christmas tree at home. As he once noted, his Manhattan Jewish home was one where Judaism had “more to do with the delicatessen than the synagogue. My brother and I went to Sunday School, but we had Christmas trees, and ‘God’ was primarily an expletive, usually preceded by ‘oh’ or ‘my’ or both.”
While he was devoutly non-religious, “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” is just one of many examples that show how Lehrer profoundly understood and lived the American Jewish experience — in fact, he is one of many great Jewish humorists who changed the way we see comedy in this country, from the Marx Brothers to Mel Brooks. And many have been indelibly marked by the song “National Brotherhood Week,” in which Lehrer sings: “Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/And the Catholics hate the Protestants/And the Hindus hate the Muslims/And ev’rybody hates the Jews.” Even Katie Couric has spoken about how that song shaped her perception of her mother’s Jewish identity.
In the three decades since it’s been written, “Hanukkah in Santa Monica” has deeply embedded itself into Jewish American culture, too. Weinman credits its popularity to Grammy-nominated Michael Feinstein, who made the song a part of his New York-based holiday shows. It’s sung at synagogues and holiday parties, by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, and this year, it finally made its way to Santa Monica, thanks to Silver.
