Purim is around the corner and we’re in the full swing of preparations here!  A couple of days ago the kids baked 150 hamantaschen (with homemade chocolate filling), and cut out thirty sets of sugar cookies that spell out Purim in Hebrew (five letters in each word, so 150 letter cookies); each of the thirty sets will be part of mishloach manos that the family sends out.

We have several container options for mishloach manos that they’ve made.  One is something that looks kind of like a small basket, made from card stock we were given over a year ago.  They taped them into box-like shapes and attached a handle; that was dd13’s idea.  Dd15 helped ds3 and ds7 make containers by stapling two paper plates together, folding down the tops of each, and attaching a pipe cleaner for a handle.  A number of them are wrapping theirs in cellophane, and it looks like I won’t be using any of the (heavily discounted sale priced :)) containers that I bought.  Dd15 printed out a bunch of colorful personalized labels, and everything is looking really nice.  Everything was packaged and finished last night, so no rush for Sunday.

They also have been preparing their costumes.  This year I really wasn’t involved much at all.  They have the many costumes I’ve made to use if they want, and the older kids are all able to figure out something on their own.  When we placed our order for grass fed beef a few weeks ago, it came in a large box with thick layers of styrofoam on all sides.  We saved this and it’s become the basis for a costume for dd9, a traffic light.  That was finished yesterday.

Now on to another kind of preparation.  I have a strong distaste for this topic but I feel it’s important not to stay silent on something I find of such great concern.    Purim is a beautiful holiday with so many special mitzvos.   However, one of those mitzvos is so easily abused that I think we have to be very, very careful about how it’s performed and what messages we give the impressionable children around us.  My concern is that too many people are using Purim as an excuse to drink and kids are picking up on this not so subtly expressed behavior.

I watched this presentation with my four older kids (ages 11, 13, 15, 16) two or three weeks ago, and I think it’s worth watching with your kids who are preteens or teens, too.  It’s done by a frum organization who is trying to get the message out to Orthodox families that this is something our communities need to address.  My kids already know my very strong feelings on this topic, since I’ve discussed the concerns brought up in this presentation with my kids on several occasions, but alcohol abuse is an important topic and isn’t the kind of thing that one speaks about just once.  I also watched with them a couple of the videos on this site (for some reason only two of the four were loading for us or I would have watched them all).

It’s good that all of our Purim specific preparations are done (except for cooking for the seuda) since I now have to get back to my kitchen to deal with 2 cases of napa that were on sale.  When I opened them up this morning and realized how many heads of napa were in each box (11 huge heads, at least five pounds each), I wasn’t congratulating myself on my bargain (7.99 case).  Rather I was mentally wondering why I did this to myself!   🙄   The only thing on my side is the cold weather, which will hopefully help keep them fresh for a while longer.

Avivah