Big mistake.
“We don’t celebrate Christmas,” Lam snapped on their way out of the store. “Happy Hanukkah!”
The Los Angeles screenwriter and producer, now 45, can’t help but laugh at that brief exchange both because of his unfiltered childhood behavior and his fiery spirit to represent his Jewish culture that still burns within him like candles on a menorah.
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“I guess it’s always kind of been ingrained in me that Hanukkah needed a little boost,” he said during a recent phone call with The Times.
As the son of a cantor growing up Sherman Oaks, Lam was surrounded by a large and thriving Jewish community. But by the time December arrived each year, Christmas decorations, songs and movies completely dominated the cultural conversation, rendering Hanukkah “an afterthought of the season.”