Spinning for Hanukkah Gelt

You probably don’t have to be Jewish to know about the Hanukkah game called Dreidel.

It’s a betting game where each player antes up and then, depending on the spin of the dreidel  –  the four-sided spinning top that serves as the dice –  he either takes nothing from the pot if the dreidel stops spinning on NUN,   takes half the pot on HEY,   or all of the pot on GIMMEL the big pay-off.  However a player who throws SHIN must add to the pot.

And In most Hanukkah-celebrating homes the “chips” are actually chocolate coins wrapped in foil –  gold foil for milk chocolate and silver foil for dark chocolate – and each player piles up their loot like gamblers do at more serious gaming tables.

In the Hanukkah song  I Have a Little Dreidel the spinning top is made of clay,  as dreidels may have been homemade by kids centuries ago.  But today at holiday time plastic dreidels in all sizes can be bought most anywhere,  although the nicer ones are made of wood.   I admit I’m a sucker for the latter and have a small collection!

Years ago we sent our very young son to a summer day camp where they were obviously teaching the kids Native American lore.  One day he came home to tell us he had learned the Indian word for “money”.

“Ah yes.”. I said,  “I think I know it too  – is it WAMPUM?” 

The kid looked puzzled.  “No,” he said,  “it’s GELT!”

(“Gelt“ you may know is Yiddish for money – I get the feeling that camp director was Jewish.)

Happy Hanukkah! 

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Board games with dice, mah jongg with dice, and the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York.
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Going into business is always dicey, you might even say a crap shoot, but I have a habit of it. 

Back in the early ‘90s, I was also in the habit of playing poker in casinos around the southland.

I’d recently come back from a trip to Africa and used some of the photos I’d taken there to make little packets of notecards as holiday gifts. Which kind of explains why, sitting at a poker table at the Commerce Casino, I suddenly I came up with the idea for a line of greeting cards for gamblers. You know, “SLOTS of love on your birthday!” and “As friends go, you’re ACES…Happy Birthday!” Kind of tacky, sure…but perfect for Vegas gift shops, right?! 

I spent months taking photos of playing cards, dice, and slot machines in various permutations, having thousands of them printed onto cards with pithy sentiments inside, then peddling them to casino gift shops across the country. And they sold!

At first I had 24 designs. Then I began hiring real artists and came up with 24 more, some of which were actually pretty cool. Plus a series of Bingo cards (and if you’ve ever been in a Bingo parlor in Vegas, you know it’s a world unto itself).

Biggest seller overall: “It’s your birthday…hope you hit the jackpot!”

My favorite: A colorful joker with the inside greeting, “Wild about YOU!”

Oh, and did I mention holiday cards? 

 

“Twas the night before Christmas 

And all through the casino 

Santa’s elves were playing blackjack, 

Roulette, and Keno. 

 

There were several at the slot machines

You could spot them by their caps 

One or two played stud

And another one shot craps.” 

Etc.

One thing led to another and the MGM Grand hired me to design an entire line of gambling-related stationery products featuring Betty Boop (!) for their new emporium, and my then-husband and I ended up moving to Las Vegas to be where the action was.

As crazy as it sounds, this was my introduction into the world of art, be that as it may. It didn’t take long for me to outgrow the genre (and to stop playing cards), and as luck would have it, someone else thought it was a great idea and bought the business from me.

So, would I do it all over again? No dice! 

 

Not easy for a woman who hates to gamble. But nothing in life is ever a sure bet.
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