Purim Bags

Purim! Yeh! I still have childhood memories of dressing up and roller skating through my school, the Hebrew Academy (I know! Can you believe it? They actually let us do that in 1974). Well, it's that time of year when we know we've made it through the winter. And, who doesn't love Purim? We put on costumes, eat treats and act like maniacs all in the name of religion. In fact, the crazier we get, the more religious we think we are. Anyway, it's a great holiday. It's the one where we can really say, "They tried to kill us, we won, now let's party."

There are 4 major commandments for this holiday: listen to the megillah (that's the official story of Purim and not once but twice...in case you didn't get the whole story the first time), give charity, give out 2 food items (Mishlocah Manot) to at least one friend and go to a party.

Simple enough.

We get totally hung up on the Mishloach Manot (giving food to a friend). You see, the directions are to give 2 different types of food to at least one person. It's really not all that complicated. But most people (us included) are insecure enough so we give out about 50 to make sure we've covered all our closest friends and then we still worry about who we left out. The really insecure people create a consortium with a bunch of other people and then they split a list to make sure their name is on a bag delivered to every person they've ever known. The slightly less insecure people make a donation and send you a card saying they donated charity in your honor (and the honor of their other 200 friends)so you won't be getting a bag from them this year. The charities love this, "Hey, send us a donation. For $18.00 we'll put your name on bag of treats going out to 500 people!"

The truth is, we love making our little bags, filling them with treats and dropping them off at people's houses. We drive around like we're the JEWPS man, ringing doorbells and dropping off little packages. We try really hard to avoid waving at the other JEWPS drivers who did not make it onto our list as making eye contact can prove to be quite awkward. The problem is that once our select friends have received their 25th bag filled with a Coscto hamantashen (Purim cookie) and a Twizzler, they're not all that happy anymore. So, we put beer in our bags.

This year I went all out and decided to hit Pinterest up for some great ideas. I hit jackpot: the tzizit bag. I was so excited to find something cute and creative...until I realized I had to punch 4 holes into each of the 36 bags, tie strings into the 4 corners of each bag, tape stripes onto the bags, apply our label and then reinforce the bottom of each bag so the beer bottle ( a lot of our friends are really thankful for that bottle of beer mid day) won't fall through the bag.

What was I thinking??? Next year, I'm going back to the dollar store-ready-to-fill bag.

Well, it's going to be a lot of fun.  Hope your Purim is happy and just a bit crazy! Happy Purim! And, please let me know if you need a lift. I have a few extra bags.