Chanukah

Hanukkah is the festival of clementines.

For eight days we celebrate these wonderful fruits. Stores and homes are filled with boxes and bags of clementines. People are eating them for breakfest, lunch, dinner and as a snack. Shuls are serving them for suedat shlishi, Chanuka parties and any other functions. Garbage bins are overflowing with orange peels.

Due to inability to say mezonos on clementines, we eat doughnuts which are similar in shape and whose sweet taste compliments the tangy taste of clementines. Though saying chamotzi on challah rolls would be an even greater elevation of this great fruit, it was decided that people would be too lazy to say the very long benching. We also light eight candles which is the minimum number of segments that a clementine has.

It's believed that this holiday was started because rabbis saw people getting sick due to the onset of cold and lack of enough vitamin C. While both the orange and the tangerine were considered, both of those were much harder to peel and more prone to contain seeds.