Happy Hanukah! Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception!

One celebration runs into another today: Hanukah and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Maybe you know one and not the other. They don't always coincide.

The Immaculate Conception always lands on December 8th. Hanukah moves around. Not being Jewish, I still have some history with Hanukah. Growing up with Jewish neighbors, we always respected their holidays, they ours. Indeed, I remember playing with a Dreidel as a child - the kind you spin with your own little hand. A Jewish acquaintance tells me that now they've got souped up Dreidel's that are somehow mechanized so that her 4-year old doesn't have to spin on his own. She thinks it's not ideal. Shouldn't the child learn to do this without the assistance of modern technology?

Modern tech has it's good side, of course. But stuff like tech Dreidels seem to fall on the dark side. 

Reminds me of HFTs - high frequency trading. The claim is they reinforce the efficiency of markets, specifically the stock market. Count me a skeptic. They just cause lots of drama, driving things up or down in extremes when there's no sense to it.

Of course, people have always driven stocks (and other items) to extremes when there's no sense to it. So maybe HFTs are just God's way of trying to show us the folly of our ways.

But despite tech Dreidels, Hanukah can stay pure and apart from being tainted. It all comes down to the intentions of those who observe the celebrations. Put God and family first, and you're doing your bit to preserve tradition and sanity in this world.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, has not tech stain - far as I know. It wasn't formalized until the 19th century, but had been celebrated for centuries before. At some point in time, Catholics who revere Mary, the mother of Jesus, figured out that she was born without the stain of Original Sin - the only fully human creature to be so privileged. So when the Angel Gabriel appeared to her and said "Hail, full of grace!" he said this because she was indeed full of grace - nothing having tainted her soul from the moment of her conception. She was pure, the purest of God's creatures. And so she was fit to receive into her womb the Son of God - Jesus Christ.

Okay, so I'm not a theologian. And what I said may or may not be sophisticated enough to fully explain how Mary could be conceived without Original Sin. But I think you can figure out why God so ordained this, right?

Anyway, tech hasn't foisted itself on today's Feast. And I hope it's not in any way tainted or Hanukah for my Jewish friends and acquaintances. So we can all just settle down and celebrate in a way that pleases God - I hope.

As for HFTs and other market dysfunction (of which there is plenty these days), it will continue, more or less, likely long past any of us buys and sells the financial detritus that Wall Street proffers. And we'll put up with it as we likely have little choice. Just see to it that the games that Wall Street plays don't suck out all your financial guts. Do your best to keep what you have.

In any case, for all my Jewish and Catholic friends out there:

Happy Hanukah!

Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception!