Chanukah Colors

I’m planning a Chanukah party for work, and my non-Jewish boss insisted that I use a blue-and-silver color scheme. I pushed back, telling her I was planning on blue-and-gold with a smattering of other colors. “But gold is for New Year’s!” she protested. I put my foot down, though, and said I was including gold in the color scheme.

I feel as though “Chanukah colors” should ideally be blue and gold (Yerushalayim) or green and gold (olives and the menorah). Heck, any color can be a “Chanukah color” if you try hard enough. But blue-and-silver just seems so American, so commercialized, so shallow.

How did “Chanukah colors” become blue and silver in the United States? I’m told that the attitude behind this cultural phenomenon goes something like, “Those are the colors of the Israeli flag, so let’s make them shiny and Christmas-like in honor of Chanukah!” I can’t imagine that being the reason, though, and I hope I’m right.

Does Israel have “Chanukah colors”? How about other countries?