Happy Hanukkah!

9 December 2012, 1014 EST

I am a very bad Jew: the kind who not only married a shiksa, but pretty much only does Hanukkah and Passover. Well, the wife’s out of the country for the entire holiday this year, but Lyra and I managed to have a nice little first night before rushing off to her tumbling-and-trampoline clinic.

I always find Chrismukkah challenging. How do I distribute the loot? How do I prevent an avalanche of gifts? As Lyra gets older, it gets easier; the ratio of books (and graphic novels) to toys shifts in the direction of the former.

This year she’s also getting some novelty gifts, such as what might best be described as a nerd-girl t-shirt befitting someone who likes playing Cthulhu Saves the World and thought Hello Cthulhu! was pretty funny.

Anyway, I babble. Happy Hanukkah and/or Happy Holidays!

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.