Colors: Cyan Color

We are living in a golden age of Pesach products – an age where there are products that our grandparents never would have dreamed of.  Especially our grandparents in Mitzrayim.  I’m sure they were like, “If only there was a towel that we could use for Urchatz.  All the towels we usually use for washing have “Al Netilas Yadayim” written on them, but for Urchatz, we don’t say, “Al Netilas Yadayim.”  What do we do?” 

I always thought I wanted a surprise party, as I’d never been on the receiving end of one. I always wondered how it felt to be surprised like that, and if I would know it was coming. I’d mentioned this thought to my wife more than a year ago, when someone on the block made a surprise party for their spouse. And what I found, once she made me one, was that it’s a moment of shock followed by an intense amount of guilt as to what you put your wife through beforehand to almost mess things up when all she wanted was to do something nice for you behind your back. And every decision you made in the days leading up to it actually made her job more and more stressful.

Every year when you clean for Pesach, the same question occurs to you: “Should I start cleaning even earlier next year?”

This is the only Yom Tov that people want to go beyond the 30-day thing.  No one says, “Maybe we should start building the sukkah over the summer,” or “Why can’t I start being marbin b’simcha on the 11th of Teves?” or “I need to start doing teshuva on Shushan Purim.  30 days is nowhere near enough for me,” or “I think I have to start eating way more than 30 days before a fast!”  Generally, 30 days is more than enough.  The only other Yom Tov that we really lean into prep time is Simchas Torah.