Hanukkah

Nine lights for Hanukkah, seven for the Temple menorah:

the count is the whole difference, and in Guatemala it matters more than in most places, because the seven-branched menorah is common as a Christian and decorative piece and gets listed under the same word. A hanukkiah carries eight lights in a row plus the shamash, the helper flame set apart from the others, and that ninth light is what to look for in a photo. Seven branches make a handsome gift for a church or a shelf, but nobody can light the eight nights on them. Around the hanukkiah sits the rest of the holiday: wooden and plastic dreidels for the children’s game, nets of chocolate gelt, and the blue and silver garlands and lights that are just as often listed under Christmas, so look in both. The eight nights fall around Christmas and the New Year, and blue-and-white tableware bought for Hanukkah tends to come out again for New Year’s.

A carved mahogany hanukkiah and the cups it sits on:

mahogany is a wood Guatemalan carvers use often, and the country’s first synagogue in the capital keeps a menorah carved from it, so a wooden piece is no surprise. They are beautiful, and they burn. Any material will do for a hanukkiah as long as it is safe around fire, so a wooden one needs metal cups or sleeves deep enough that a candle burning down to the end never reaches the wood, with the lights spaced so one flame does not lean into the next. Brass is the practical choice for lighting night after night. Ceramic cleans easily but chips at the rim of each cup, and the painted tin or clay ones made for children let each child light their own, as many families do. Whatever it is made of, check that the cups take standard Hanukkah candles, which are thinner than household tapers. A standard box holds exactly enough for all eight nights, shamash included.

Scorch marks, loose cups and brass that is not brass:

on a wooden hanukkiah, look closely around each cup for darkened or charred wood, and along the base for hairline cracks that open as the wood dries out. Press on every metal sleeve: one that turns or lifts will let a candle tip. On metal pieces, carry a fridge magnet. Solid brass does not attract it, so if the magnet sticks, the gold colour is a coating over steel, and once that coating is scratched it rusts rather than polishing back. Lacquered brass that had its wax scraped off with a knife is left with dull streaks that darken. Count the cups on any hanukkiah with removable ones, because a missing cup is hard to match. Wooden dreidels split along the grain, and chocolate gelt is only worth taking sealed and in date.

Listing a hanukkiah so it is not lost among seven-branch menorahs:

put hanukkiah or Hanukkah menorah in the title and say it has nine lights. Photograph it from above so all nine cups are visible, then with a candle standing in one of them. Give the material, whether the cups are metal and whether they lift out, and mention any candles that go with it. The date moves each year with the Hebrew calendar and can land weeks before Christmas, so list early rather than waiting for the Christmas rush. Someone driving in from Antigua for a carved piece will want to stand a candle in each cup and see how close the flame comes to the wood, so have a box of candles on the table when they arrive.