This Year's Dates for Celebrating Hanukkah are Odd—Here's Why

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What's New

Hanukkah and Christmas fall on the same day this year, marking a rare occurrence of the two religious celebrations coinciding.

The Context

Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, begins this year on Christmas Day. This has only happened four times since 1900 as the Jewish calender differs from the civil Gregorian calender.

About 2.5 percent of the United States population will celebrate Hanukkah starting on Wednesday, amid an ongoing threat of antisemitism within the country.

The Anti-Defamation League, the leading anti-hate organization in the world, has found an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S., including a 500 percent increase on college campuses since October 7, 2023. It said there has been a 135 percent rise in incidents in kindergarten through 12th grade schools over the past year.

What To Know

Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the small Jewish patriots, the Maccabees, and their win over the large Greek army over two millennia ago.

About 2,200 years ago, there was a war between the Greeks and Jews. The Greeks had won and forced their cultural beliefs onto the Jews, making the Jewish people not able to pray or openly celebrate their own holidays.

A group of Jewish people called the Maccabees revolted and liberated Jerusalem. However, the small army found their Temple desecrated. They wanted to rededicate it to God, since the Greeks had prayed to Zeus there. As part of the rededication, they needed to relight the menorah with olive oil.

They found only one jar of undefiled oil, and that was expected to only last one day. They still relit the menorah, and to their surprise the oil miraculously lasted eight days.

Hanukkah is celebrated now for eight days to commemorate each day the oil lasted.

What are the dates for celebrating Hanukkah in 2024?

This year, Hanukkah is celebrated from December 25 at sunset to January 2 at sunset.

How often does Hanukkah fall on Christmas?

The last time that Hanukkah began on Christmas Day was in 2005.

The reason the two don't always sync—and sometime coincidentally do—is based on the two different calendars. The Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle. The civil calendar in use around the world, also known as the Gregorian calendar, is solar based.

Hanukkah always starts on the 25^th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. This is typically between late November and late December on the Gregorian calendar.

What year will there be no Hanukkah?

There will be no Hanukkah in 3031, but two in 3032.

No calendar perfectly captures the Earth's orbit. Part of the reason for the lack of Hanukkah in 3031—beyond the different calendars—is the fact that an extra month is added to the Jewish calendar during a Jewish leap year. The extra month, called Adar I, is added after the month of Shevat and before the month of Adar.

The extra month is added seven times within 19 years to realign the lunar and solar years.

How is Hanukkah celebrated?

Hanukkah is not one of the major holidays within Judaism, and religious holiday restrictions do not apply, according to The Jewish Chronicle. The two sacred holidays mentioned in scripture were celebrated earlier this year: Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The Festival of Light's popularity, however, coincided with Christmas to become more of a gift-giving celebration due to Western cultural influence.

Jews light a menorah, which is a nine-branched candle holder. The shamash, or helper candle, sits in the middle branch of a traditional looking menorah and helps to light the others. Each day one candle is added to the menorah, from right to left, to count the days of the holiday.

Families often come together for a meal, eating traditional foods that celebrate the miracle of the oil. Recipes include latkes, or potato pancakes that are served with applesauce and sour cream; sufganiyot, or jelly-filled doughnuts; kugel, or noodle casserole; knishes, or a savory pastry; and rugelach, or flaky sweet pastries.

Children often play a game called dreidel, which is a four-sided spinning top. Each side has a Hebrew letter. Together, the letters—nun, gimel, hey and shin—stand for the phrase "Nes gadol haya sham," which means "a great miracle happened there."

For the game with the dreidel, each letter indicates what a player is supposed to do with the tokens in a pot, usually coins or gelt (originally a slang term for real money but now tending to mean chocolate coins). Another theory around Hanukkah becoming a gift-giving holiday is around the customs of "gelt giving."

If a nun is rolled, nothing happens. A hey means the player gets half of the pot. A gimel gives the person the whole pot, and shin means they put one of their coins in.

What People Are Saying

Rabbi Josh Stanton, a vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America, told The Associated Press about Hannukah: "This can be a profound opportunity for learning and collaboration and togetherness"

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, told The Associated Press: "The posture of our community—without stridency, just with determination—is that the menorah should be in our windows, in a place where the public sees it … We have to share that light. Putting the menorah in the window is our expression of working to be a light among the nations."

Rabbi Motti Seligson, public relations director for the Hasidic movement Chabad-Lubavitch, told The Associated Press: "Hanukkah is a celebration of religious liberty, so that it's not taken for granted … Some people question whether Jews will be celebrating as openly as in the past."