Pastor Robert “Jews are going to hell” Jeffress was the featured clergy at this year’s White House Hanukah celebration.

Chanukah is my least favorite religious holiday for a long list of reasons, but this year I have a very special new one: the unRev. Robert Jeffress, who has said Jews are going to hell, was the featured clergy at this year’s White House Hannukah celebration. Makes me want to disinfect my menorah.

And now, due to last week’s executive order, just in time for Chanukah, Jews are no longer a religion, but a nationality. I know how over-the-top irate Trump supporters get when Trump’s compared to Hitler, but Hitler considered the Jews a separate nationality also. And Jews in the Soviet Union listed had Jewish, rather than Soviet or Russian, stamped in their passports. Anywhere else, Judaism is a religion. It is NOT a nationality. My nationality, no matter what Trump orders, is American.

But I have a long history of disliking the holiday that only became popular over the past few decades so Jewish kids “didn’t feel left out of Christmas.”

I never felt left out. I can enjoy you celebrating your holidays and you can help me celebrate mine — Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover as well as a variety of more-important-than-Chanuka minor holidays.

Until the 1950s when Jews moved to the suburbs, Hannuka was considered a very minor holiday. Light a few candles and you’re done with it. Now, a real Jewish holiday has an interminable service that even the most devout Jew can’t sit through without at least a bathroom (very long) break or two. Most Jews just don’t sit through it. This one? A quickie prayer. Candles that burn out in less than 30 minutes. And so lacking in color and tradition that Jewish musicians have been forced to celebrate the holiday season by recording Christmas music that was mostly written by Jews as well.

On the Jewish calendar, Hanukkah is the least important holiday. It’s even less important than Shmini Atzeret. What’s Shmini Atzeret? Who the hell knows. No, seriously, we don’t actually know. But it’s a biblically prescribed celebration that takes place on the eighth day of Sukkot (basically the harvest feast). What the Torah forgets to tell us is exactly what does that holiday celebrate.

At the time it was written, it was probably obvious. Kind of like the 4th of July. Everyone knows what it is. No explanation necessary. Except now, a few thousand years after Shmini Atzeret was pronounced a holiday, explanation necessary.

But it’s more important than Hanukkah because it’s commanded in the Torah. Chanukkah isn’t.

The events of Hannuka happened years after the Bible was already redacted and the Book of Maccabees is apocrypha — excluded from the Jewish Bible.

Chanuka celebrates a war victory. I prefer not celebrating war. The battle was kind of significant historically, not because of the win, but because it was the first time in recorded history that guerrilla warfare was used. That allowed 4,000 or so Maccabees to whoop the crap out of 40,000 Assyrians. Nice that they won, but I’d rather celebrate Purim (the traditional Jewish gift-giving and costume-wearing holiday). And for those who love Hanukah, Purim follows the same pattern as most Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us. We beat em. Let’s eat.

And the spelling. The only way Hannukkah is never spelled is the way it would be transliterated from Hebrew. In Hebrew, it’s spelled Khet-Nun-Kof-Hay with four consonants and three understood vowels, which would transliterate into English as: Khanookah. All us Jews who are used to reading anglicized Hebrew would understand that transliteration and none of us spells it that way. There’s no double consonant. No “ch” sound in Hebrew. It begins with a guttural KH. There’s definitely an H at the end of the word. And that middle vowel is an “oo” not an “uh.” How can I ever love a holiday we can’t even spell?

— David Taffet