My Baby Bottle Menorah

Each year as Hanukah approaches, I’m reminded of what I consider to be one of my finest parenting moments—weaning my son off of his baby bottle by having him help me turn all of his bottles into a giant menorah. Max was closing in on his third birthday and while he had long since successfully switched over to sippy cups, he was still insisting on a bottle at night to help him go to sleep. Some of our friends were advocating the “cold turkey” method and others were recommending a more slow and steady process. I finally hit upon the strategy after an afternoon of helping my Rabbi begin his preparations for Hanukah.

At the time I was a member of a Chabad synagogue and the rabbi spent the two weeks leading up to Hanukkah driving around with a giant menorah on the roof of his car. Helping him secure the menorah, I thought, “Viola” in a moment of divine inspiration. I rushed home and told Max: “In the next two weeks we’re going to build a giant menorah for Hanukah.”

“How will we build a menorah?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, pondering his question, “we need to use wood to make the frame. And we need something else to make the candle holders.” We went to our garage where I had a work area and we began laying out some scraps of wood that I kept around for home repair projects. With me using a real hammer and Max using his plastic hammer, we quickly put together a frame.

“What color should our menorah be?” I asked.

“Gold.” Max announced. “My teacher said a menorah is gold.”

We went to Home Depot and purchased the gold paint. We laid out a tarp and painted our frame a magnificent gold.

Over the next few days we searched the house looking for the right thing to hold the candles. Like in the Goldilocks story, some things were too big and others were too small. Finally, with some subliminal suggestions, Max tried out one of his bottles.

“Why that’s perfect!” I exclaimed. “Let’s try using al of your bottles for candleholders.”

Lo and behold, we found that we had realized that hoarded 9 bottles in our house, the exact number we needed to complete our baby bottle menorah.

“It’s a miracle,” I exclaimed as Max placed all the bottles in a row. “It’s the second miracle of Hanukah.”

Before Max realized what was happening, we painted his bottles a bright gold color, and I then mounted them onto the Menorah frame.

When we stood it up, standing before was a magnificent 5 foot tall golden Menorah just in time for Hanukah.

Max never asked for his bottle again, and we used the Menorah for a few years as a display on our front lawn. Just one word to the wise—if you do this- DO NOT put real candles into your bottle menorah. Plastic painted gold is still plastic, and you can only count on so many miracles!