Only one other Jewish family lives in Wendy Grosser's Minneapolis neighborhood, where the Christmas season arrived in twinkling lights and Nativity scenes on front lawns.
Her son and two daughters, all under age 8, know their friends will soon gather with their families, ripping red-and-green ribbon from piles of gifts. But Grosser, a Conservative Jew, won't compete by giving a bundle of toys to her own children as Hanukkah begins this weekend.
Like many American Jews, she is resisting the pull of the holidays' close timing - an annual occurrence that has spread a misperception about Hanukkah, that it has near equivalent religious significance as Christmas.
"We are trying to emphasize its unimportance," Grosser said, of the Jewish holiday, also known as the "Festival of Lights." "I didn't want to do a big party because it glorifies it too much."
Hanukkah is the third-most observed Jewish holiday in the United States behind Passover and Yom Kippur, according to surveys, but it is less significant under Jewish law than those two holidays and four others, including the weekly Sabbath and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.
Hanukkah commemorates how Jews reclaimed the defiled Jerusalem Temple from a Syrian despot in 165 B.C., and how one-day's worth of ritual oil that the Jews found miraculously burned for eight days.
The holiday is celebrated by lighting a menorah, or candelabra, for eight nights. Gift-giving is traditionally part of Hanukkah, too, but the custom is for children to receive coins - real or chocolate - called gelt.
That changed in the United States when Jewish immigrants, eager to adapt to American culture, took notice of secular Christmas traditions and began incorporating them into their own celebrations.
Terri Bernsohn, a religious school administrator, remembered being told as a child that Hanukkah gifts were from a Santa equivalent called "Hanukkah Herman." Her parents even put up a small, white Christmas tree with blue ornaments. (Blue is a color associated with Jewish observance.)
"I don't remember it being called a Hanukkah bush, but many families had them," said Bernsohn, of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill.
Americans of other faiths have also played a role in the holiday hype, promoting Hanukkah in an effort to honor religious diversity, said Samuel Heilman, a sociologist at the City University of New York and an expert on American Judaism.
"There was a recognition that December might not just be the Christmas season," Heilman said. (Determined by a lunar calendar, the Jewish festival usually falls between late November and December.)
Advertisers took note and began promoting the holiday, and Hanukkah started looking a bit more like a visit from St. Nick.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, a scholar and author, said that his father once worked for a company that produced Hanukkah toys and candles, and the closer the two holidays fell, the more business the company did.
"It's become part of the American economy," said Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, which represents more than 1,000 North American synagogues.
Weinreb said "tasteful" gift giving does not violate the religious message of the holiday, but decried the "crassness" and "commercialism" that characterized some celebrations.
Certainly, exchanging presents other than chocolate coins has become the norm at Hanukkah, mimicking Christmas gift giving.
The Wordsworth bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., has steadily increased its stock of Hanukkah items in the past several years. Their products range from plastic dreidls - the four-sided tops that are used to play Hanukkah games - to menorahs styled like choo-choo trains.
"We're finding there's more of a demand for it," said Colby Cedar Smith, a store spokeswoman.
Items inspired by Christmas decorations are among the traditional silver menorahs and chocolate coins for sale on jewishsource.com, said Rabbi Herschel Strauss, who founded the mail-order business 32 years ago.
One example is a Hanukkah banner similar to "Merry Christmas" banners people post in windows. One of his best-selling items years ago was a Star of David decoration with "Christmas-like lights," he said.
While Strauss occasionally hears complaints about these products from some of his more religious customers, he sees no danger in Jews buying the decorations.
"They want the spirit, the fun and the joy of it," said Strauss, who is Orthodox. "Jews have always, historically, from my perspective, taken and adapted from local cultures - and vice versa."
Bernsohn, a mother of three teenagers, said her family tries to avoid playing up the holiday by limiting the number of gifts they exchange and incorporating charity into the celebration, either by donating money or bringing her children to work in a soup kitchen.
Deborah Freeman, who is Jewish and married to a Roman Catholic, celebrates both holidays with their 17-year-old daughter, but gives only small gifts each night of the Jewish festival in keeping with tradition.
"I try to keep Hanukkah low key because, when I was a kid, it was very low key. All I got was chocolate," said Freeman, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "Just because it happens to fall in December, doesn't give it more significance than it deserves."