FROM THE MENORAH TO THE MANGER : THE HANUKKAH-CHRISTMAS HYBRID MARATHON MAKES EVERYONE HAPPY - ESPECIALLY THE KIDS.

Byline: Elizabeth Rapoport New York Times Syndicate

It's a good thing I started carbo-loading at Thanksgiving. Now that it's December, I'll be running a monthlong marathon and won't hit the tape until New Year's.

The starting gun goes off with the beginning of Hanukkah at sundown today. I'll make the first of several trips to Toys `R' Us to stock up on presents for our two kids for the eight days of the Festival of Lights - token presents for the first few nights, leading up to a big finish. (This year I'm planning ahead - absolutely no more linty Life Savers from the bottom of my book bag or thumbtacks from the utility drawer.)

I'll spend a few hours sipping kosher merlot while scraping last year's wax off the menorahs. I'll dig out the spinning dreidels from behind the radiator, where I'm pretty sure Jake fed them. I'll spring for fresh Hanukkah gelt, the gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins that bring luck for the new year, so Becca won't get the runs if she decides to eat the centerpiece again. I'll turn out pans full of potato pancakes, topping them with applesauce to avoid last year's nouvelle gaffe of garnishing them with creme fraiche and caviar.

I'll slow down to a jog for a few days; then it's up with the Christmas tree, down to Toys `R' Us for a few more wild-eyed trips through the aisles and into the kitchen, with the kids ``helping'' turn out a few dozen batches of butter cookies for the neighbors. (I'll surreptitiously divert a couple slugs of rum from the batter - by this time I'll surely be eliminating that fruitcake middleman.)

I'll address and mail out several dozen Christmas cards (I thought Windows 95 was going to do that). I'll hunt in vain for a single one of the 10 rolls of hideously expensive yet surprisingly ugly wrapping paper I bought for the school fund-raiser.

On Christmas morning, I'll have an hour to stretch out among piles of spent Caldor wrapping paper before my husband and I get behind the wheel to cart the kids to various relatives' houses.

It's hard to know how to pace myself for the final stretch. Given the multicultural themes at Jake and Becca's schools, my husband and I are prepared for anything. Until the final bus drop on Dec. 22, any night of the week could find us up to the wee hours folding Japanese origami storks, harvesting for Kwanzaa, cutting and pasting crowns for Three Kings Day. I'm for diversity, but where will it end?

As exhausting as all these ``we-are-the-world'' festivities are, especially on top of a full-time job, I find the hubbub vastly preferable to a world where my Jewish husband feels like the odd man out.

I'm embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until Bob came into my life that I ever considered how overwhelming and, well, dispiriting the Christmas season must be for non-Christians. Especially when Christmas-tree lightings get the same breathless, top-of-the-news coverage as the latest Bosnian incursion, when stores flog even lint trays and surgical support hose as stocking stuffers, when every last jot of TV programming subjects you to double and triple doses of the hot holiday toy - this year's version of the Power Rangers.

Because Bob is Jewish and I was raised Catholic, our holiday traditions are often not only incongruent, they're sometimes in conflict.

I have no idea in which category of U.S. Census Bureau statistics our interfaith marriage puts us. Certainly we have plenty of friends who have married out of religion, nationality or ideology. When any family has two sets of separate but equal forebears, as does ours, it's time to forge new traditions. It's an opportunity, but also a dilemma.

It's generally not until kids come on the scene that we realize how very sacred we hold the traditions that tiptoed into our marriages along with the china, crystal and multiple pasta machines.

The family trade secrets need not be lofty, but we don't always want to give them up without a fight. Marrying a Jewish man made me realize that - although l'm no longer a practicing Catholic - I'm not quite blase about surrendering Christmas.

My first efforts at creating our own family traditions for the month of December were a slapdash amalgam of my old family ways with some Jewish window dressing. My plan was to have a Christmas tree but trim it with dreidels and a six-pointed Star of David. We'd hang stockings from the mantel - but stuff them with Hanukkah gelt. I'd have Barbra Streisand on the stereo warbling ``O Holy Night.''

While I stopped short of filling the menorah with red and green candles, it was obvious that I wasn't thinking things through. Bob reasonably inquired whether this wasn't sending a mixed message to the children we'd decided to raise Jewish. Who, me?

Arriving at a compromise has been tough, but arrive we have. We basically do a fully caffeinated Hanukkah and a kind of Noel Lite. This month, the Christmas tree - ``Mommy's tree,'' trimmed with jalapeno lights and creche-free - will hold sway in the living room while the menorahs line the window shelf in the dining room. My family cookie-dough recipe will be shaped into a motley collection of reindeer, trees, dreidels and menorahs, with a few Halloween witches, bats and the Statue of Liberty thrown in for good measure.

Never one to look a chocolate gift horse in the mouth, the whole family will indiscriminately consume foil-wrapped Santas and gold coins until our teeth ache. The kids will bob about in a constant drizzle of presents, large and small, beginning with the first day of Hanukkah and culminating in an increasingly modest Christmas-morning display.

Our kids are loving it. Unlike the overanxious, over-intellectualizing adults (OK, mother) who spawned them, they have no problem with the idea that they're being raised Jewish and Daddy's Jewish, but Mommy's not. (Besides, they're hardly going to kick about all those presents.)

That shouldn't surprise me; children are justly famous for their ability to distill what's really important from the usually unnecessarily complicated adult situations.

If I do need a Christmas fix, I can always drop by my brother's house and bask in a gorgeous five-star Kringle display without actually having to affix the googly eyes and pipe-cleaner antlers to the candy cane reindeer myself.

Despite all the late-night baking sessions and extended shopping-day countdown, I think the lesson of tolerance our kids are getting at home is a good one. And while it's easy to make fun of some of the excesses of multiculturalism, I'm glad my kids' schools are expanding the message of inclusion and mutual respect, encouraging us to invite everyone into our homes.

As a reformed exclusive member of ``Generation X-mas,'' I find December has more joy for me than ever. What my husband and I are creating with our kids will never match my childhood memories. But they're more precious to me - as wife, mother, person - because they're my family's holiday memories.

There's Aunt Jane's triumphant dreidel-shaped cake waiting on the sideboard. There's the entire family's collection of menorahs fully lit on the eighth night of Hanukkah - dozens of candles ablaze.

And there's the look in my husband's eyes as I lead our children into the dining room for the huge meal on this final night of the Feast of Lights: Jake squirming with pride in his miniature tie, sports jacket and the beanie he calls a ``harmonica''; Becca beautifully becalmed in a blue velvet dress with a white collar, lace tights and Mary Janes, a trail of shucked gold foil coin wrappers in her wake.

May the joys of the season be with you, too.

CAPTION(S):

Drawing

Drawing: no caption (Menorah, wreath)

Traci Wooden/Daily News