not my idea: we eat oily burned food to show that we are not going to stay in shape to run in Olympic games
my idea: we are rejecting greek idea of determinism by playing random games. So, dreidel looks like a perfect symmetric polygon that greeks loved so much, but we ten take it for a gut yiddishe spin – in circles – with irrational lengths and, most importantly, into an predictable trajectory destroying the idea of determinism. In the simplest and most visible way.
It is like Albert – “G-d does not play games” Einstein visits Nils Bohr for Chanuka and Nils, instead of spewing quantum formulas, simply spins the dreidel and asks Albert to predict the letter. Tiuvta Einstein Tiuvta.
A modern version is low predictability of weather despite all sensors and computers we got.