[The following was sent in by a friend for posting.]

In the crowded 2010 field of Chanukkah videos aiming to go viral, why did America fall in love with 14 boys from Yeshiva University singing "Candlelight"?

And we did fall in love. It sold enough downloads to hit the top of the Billboard charts, ranking No. 2 in Comedy Digital Tracks and No. 19 in Holiday Digital Songs.

Jews had barely had time to light the first candle before the response videos began to appear. Doting parents posted videos of toddlers dancing to the song. Garage bands covered the tune. Parodies appeared. Bloggers and Youtube viewers admitted to clicking repeat until their fingers grew numb, offered to convert, proposed marriage and swooned over the "cutie" at 0:36. Bloggers claimed to have the hots for these yeshivah boys in white shirts and neckties. And some of these swooning bloggers were girls.

Journalists loved them because at this time every year some hapless reporter has to come up with a fresh Chanukkah story. This video was God's gift to journalists. Still, why this story? Why not any of this year's other Chanukah videos?

For one thing, it is not about Christmas. Chanukah songs usually are about Christmas. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert's wistful duet, "Can I Interest You in Hanukkah?" sold Chanukah as an "alternative to Christmas." Adam Sandler's "Chanukah" was about Jewish kids who feel like " the only kid in town without a x-mas tree." Even Matisyahu seems to spend December dreaming about Santa Claus.

Not the Maccabeats. Thes don't see Chanukkah as a pallid, Jewish imitation of Christmas. They see Chanukkah. And we love them them for that.

These boys are singing Chanukkah in the authentic American day school tradition, featuring Maccabees with aluminum foil shields and sugar-powdered doughnuts that spurts jelly onto your lap. Yes, Maccabees. Chanukkah songs rarely have Maccabees. They have dreidels, candles and latkes. South Park's take on Chanukkah songs pretty much pegged it. It leaves you wondering why anyone bothers with this second-rate holiday. The Macabeats song leaves you smiling.

The Maccabeats get extra points for putting the Greek Philosophers (0:19) back into the Chanukkah story, but where they really score is on the authenticity meter.

What, you ask, is authentically Jewish about a Chanukkah song set to Taio Cruz's Dynamite? Its the fact that a Jewish boy named Immanuel Shalev could listen to Cruz's lyrics and think "I flip my latkes in the air sometimes sayin ayy ohh spin the dreidel."

The boys in this band are genuinely bi-cultural. Jewish is not merely something they do on Saturday, it is half of their intellectual vocabulary. They know Rabban Gamliel as intimately as they know John Lennon. And they like Rabban Gamliel as much as they like John Lennon.

Singing live on CBS on the fifth day of Chanukkah, they described themselves as "a bunch of fun, energetic guys, who take life seriously, but don't take themselves too seriously, and who are proud of their heritage."

Nice boys who are proud of their heritage, take life seriously, and know how to have fun. How profoundly American. No wonder we love them.