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"The Chanukah Song"
by Adam Sandler

                   

Look, I was going to start this super-fun activity with "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey, but someone is making a big deal about it so I'm going to save that one for a little later in the activity, when she's least expecting it. In the meantime, why not start off this "12 Days of Christmas" activity with a Chanukah song?

Originally written and performed by Adam Sandler on Saturday Night Live, this has become an incredibly popular holiday song among Jews and gentiles alike. The song largely centers around listing Jewish celebrities and, not counting assorted variants performed at live events, there are actually three different versions of the song. As originally recorded in 1994 and released on his 1996 comedy album "What the Hell Happened To Me?", the song includes celebrities such as David Lee Roth, James Caan, Kirk Douglas, and Dinah Shore (sometimes replaced with Pauly Shore), as well as the classic line, "O.J. Simpson... not a Jew!" Sandler updated the song in 1999 with another list of celebrities, this time including the likes of Winona Ryder, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Harvey Keitel, as well as an updated, "O.J. Simpson... still not a Jew." And then in 2002, a third installment was released with Sandler's movie Eight Crazy Nights and includes celebrities like Ross and Phoebe from Friends, Debra Messing, and Ben Stiller.

Sandler has a habit of including different stanzas during his live performances (see the Pauly Shore reference above). Some of the ones are regularly edited out include:

"As for half-Jewish actors, Sean Penn is quite the great one
And Marlon Brando's not a Jew at all, but it looks to me like he ate one"

and

"Gwyneth Paltrow's half-Jewish, but a full-time Oscar winner
Jennifer Connelly's half-Jewish too, and I'd like to put some more in her"

The reason I love this song is because I happen to agree with Sandler that there are plenty of Christmas songs but not enough Chanukah songs for Jewish kids... and even though I don't necessarily think it's a very family-friendly song that you can sing when bubbe comes to visit, it is amusing and fun to listen to. I love the fact that Sandler has updated it over the years and has other stanzas in his live versions; it creates a very entertaining song that can be listened to over and over again with new things to discover before it gets old.