When Holidays Share A Day

by Susie Black

Every so often, conflicting holidays fall on the same day. This year the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day. Why is Hanukkah celebrated on different dates? While it rarely seems to be celebrated on the same day, on the Hebrew calendar, Hanukkah always falls on the 25th day of the month of Kislev. The first day of Hanukkah can come as early as November or as late as the end of December, which means occasionally Hanukkah overlaps with Thanksgiving or Christmas. The last time we celebrated Thanksgivukkah was in 2013. Hanukkah and Christmas saw dual celebrations in 2005 and converged again in 2024. Due to the difference in calendars, every year Jewish people around the world—and their gentile friends— are left Googling the start date for Hanukkah.

Unless someone lives under a rock, almost everyone is familiar with the story of Christmas. The history of Hannukah is less familiar to most folks. Candidly, most Jewish holidays would not be described as lots of fun. We are either asking God’s forgiveness for our sins, thanking God for Moses finally asking directions and stopping wandering in the desert after forty years, praying for good crops, or a better new year.

So, what is Hannukah? A little history will illuminate the reason the holiday is also rightfully called the Festival of Lights. Way back in 168 B.C., soldiers loyal to King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled over Judea, another name for the Land of Israel, descended upon Jerusalem, massacring thousands of Jews and desecrating the city’s holy Second Temple by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs inside its sacred walls.

Led by the Jewish priest Mattathias and his five sons, a large-scale rebellion broke out against Antiochus and the Seleucid monarchy. After Mattathias died, his son Judah Maccabee (“the Hammer”), took over the helm. Within two years, the Jews successfully drove the Syrians out of Jerusalem. Judah called on his followers to cleanse the Second Temple, rebuild its altar, and light its menorah—the gold candelabrum whose seven branches represented knowledge and creation and meant to be kept burning every night.

Judah Maccabee and the other Jews who took part in the rededication of the Second Temple witnessed what they believed to be a miracle. While only enough untainted olive oil remained to keep the menorah’s candles burning for a single day, the flames continued flickering for eight nights, leaving the Jews enough time to find a fresh supply. This wondrous miracle inspired the Jewish sages to proclaim a yearly eight-day festival. To commemorate this miracle, we light eight candles to symbolize the number of days the Temple lantern blazed.

The ninth candle in the middle of the menorah is called the shamash, which is a helper used to light the others. Families light one candle on the first day, two on the second, and so on, each evening after sundown during the eight days of Hanukkah while reciting a prayer. When each candle is lit, a prayer is recited: Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, asher kid'shanu b-mitzvotav, v-tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah. For those who don’t speak Hebrew, the prayer says Blessed are you, Our God, Ruler of the Universe, who makes us holy through Your commandments and commands us to light the Hanukkah lights.

Compared to other Jewish holidays, Hanukkah is a relatively minor one. I’m pretty sure the only reason it got elevated in importance is to level the playing field for whiny Jewish kids at Christmas time so we’d quit complaining how the Gentile kids received a bunch of great gifts and we got the hole from the bagel. Jewish children get eight gifts. One per night for each day of the holiday. When my sister and I were children the first four nights were fantastic gifts, but the next four the gifts got progressively less and less exciting. By the last night? A pack of bubblegum. One year, I suggested my parents consolidate and give us four super gifts the first four nights and nothing the last four nights. For some reason, Mom didn’t cotton to my suggestion at all.

We decorated our house with blue and white lights on the outside, and in addition to the wax candle menorah, my parents lit a small electric menorah in our living room window.

The dreidel-a four-sided spinning top or sevivon is the most famous custom associated with Hanukkah. It is said Jews played with this toy to fool the Greeks if they were caught studying the outlawed Torah. The dreidel game represents an irony of Jewish history. To celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah, which commemorates our victory over cultural assimilation, we play the dreidel game, which is an excellent example of cultural assimilation! Of course, there is a world of difference between imitating non-Jewish games and worshiping idols, yet the irony remains nonetheless.

Hanukkah gelt—flat, circular chocolate candies wrapped in gold foil and markings to resemble coins are used as the tokens in the Dreidel betting game.

When my siblings and I were children, our parents hid Hanukkah gelt all over the house and we kids raced around like maniacs to find the coins. Once we found them, we used the candy coins as money to put into the pot when we played the dreidel game.

The Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hey, and shin, appear on the sides of the dreidel and stand for nes gadol haya sham— which means a great miracle happened. Depending on which letter on the dreidel your spin lands on face up determines the outcome of the game. If your spin lands on the letter symbolizing N-U-N, you do nothing, and the next player on your left takes their turn. If your spin lands on the letter symbolizing G-I-M-M-E-L, good news! You take all the tokens in the pot. If you land on the letter symbolizing H-E-Y, you take half the tokens in the pot. If your spin lands on the letter symbolizing S-H-I-N, you put one more token in the pot. CREDIT: THE HISTORY CHANNEL

Like many readers, I enjoy holiday-themed novels. As an author who happens to be Jewish, I’ve noticed that while there is a huge selection of Christmas-themed books out every year, Hanukkah-themed books are few and far between. So, rather than just kvetching: Yiddish for complaining about it, I decided to be part of the solution instead of the problem. My newest humorous cozy mystery, Death by Dreidel is slated for release in 2025. And yes, the dreidel is the murder weapon! Oye vey.

Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. Like the protagonist in her Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, Susie is a successful apparel sales executive. Susie began telling stories as soon as she learned to talk. Now she’s telling all the stories from her garment industry experiences in humorous mysteries. 

She reads, writes, and speaks Spanish, albeit with an accent that sounds like Mildred from Michigan went on a Mexican vacation and is trying to fit in with the locals. Since life without pizza and ice cream as her core food groups wouldn’t be worth living, she’s a dedicated walker to keep her girlish figure. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect. 

Looking for more? Contact Susie at:

Website: www.authorsusieblack.com

E-mail: mysteries_@authorsusieblack.com