Thanksgivukkah… what does it mean?

This year, 2013, the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, fell on the same calendar day as Thanksgiving.  This prompted a rather large response of funny musical videos portraying various unusual combinations of costumes and holiday traditions, as well as some very creative recipes that mingled the traditional foods of both holidays into a unique Thanksgivukkah cuisine.

According to Wikepedia, “Because the Gregorian and Jewish calendars have slightly different average year lengths, over time they drift out of sync with each other. As a result of this, the first day of Hanukkah will not precede or coincide with Thanksgiving Day again in the foreseeable future. One physicist has calculated that, if the Jewish calendar is not revised, Thursday, November 28 will not fall during Hanukkah again until the year 79811, once it has drifted all the way around the cycle of the Gregorian calendar and back to November. Many media sources have reported this “tongue-in-cheek” calculation as a serious estimate of the date of the next Thanksgivukkah. However, since the Jewish day does not begin at midnight, but on the sunset before it, there will be two more years in which Hanukkah and Thanksgiving partially overlap, with the first night of Hanukkah beginning in the evening of Thanksgiving. These will be the evenings of Thursday, November 27, 2070 and Thursday, November 28, 2165.  The most recent such year was 1918.”

Any way you look at it… that is a really long time!

The woman credited with coining the name Thanksgivukkah is Dana Gitell from Boston, MA.

At first, she thought people would find it amusing, but the idea grew.  “The more I thought about,” she says, “I realized it’s also an opportunity to celebrate the Jewish-American experience and for Jewish-Americans to give thanks for America and the religious freedoms we enjoy here.  It’s also a chance for Hanukkah to enjoy a fresh spotlight, rather than being “lumped in” with Christmas.”

That is what brings me to the serious side of this article.  The two holidays that converged this year actually have quite a lot more in common than one might think at first look.

A miracle occurred in the 2nd century B.C., when a small band of Jews led by Judah Maccabee and his sons triumphed over the forces of King Antiochus IV.  When they entered the temple in Jerusalem, which had been desecrated by the occupying forces, only a small quantity of oil was found, just enough to last for only one day.  Miraculously this oil burned for eight days, enough time to acquire more oil to light the temple, which is why Jews light the candles on the menorah for eight nights.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman recently posted on Chabad.org: “Thanksgiving is a narrative about an arduous journey to escape religious persecution for freedom in a new land, the establishment of a democratic charter and the sense of Divine providence that carried those refugees through their plight.  That’s Chanukah, as well, a narrative deeply embedded in the collective Jewish psyche of how we fought back against religious oppression in our own land, earned our freedom and thanked G-d for the miracles.”

Another Rabbi, David Paskin, was quoted as saying, “The story of Hanukkah is a story of religious freedom. It’s a story of a people yearning to truly live as full Jews and yet also be fully integrated into a secular society. The story of Thanksgiving is of pilgrims yearning for their own religious freedom and trying to find their identity in a new world that they didn’t even know yet.”

Hanukkah, just like Thanksgiving, is a celebration of a miracle of God’s provision. Both holidays are deeply rooted in expressions of gratitude for the freedoms and bounty we enjoy.   The parallels may not be as striking, nor the symbolism as fundamental as those between Easter and Passover, but the thread of commonality is undeniable, and so I wonder, “Why now?”  God’s plan is perfect and because it is His plan, I find myself wondering what He wants us to learn from this alignment of days on calendars that conflict, as we live out our lives in a society full of conflicting viewpoints.

This was all driven home as I watched the Fox News reports on the atheist campaign to take Christ out of Christmas in Times Square.  The atheist representative’s point was that we should allow everyone to share in the joy of Christmas equally and without guilt, regardless of whether or not they celebrated Christ as the reason for the season.  From my perspective, Christians have always welcomed everyone to join their celebrations at Christmas.  Yes, they hold out hope that the seeds of faith might be planted in those who don’t know Jesus, but they have never denied anyone their right to celebrate the holiday with or without religious conviction.  For many Christians it is the season of the prodigal as those who do not attend church regularly, are drawn to it at Christmas time.  Obviously, you can’t take Christ out of Christmas any more than you could take Thanks out of Thanksgiving or remove the miracle of the oil from the Hanukkah story – RIDICULOUS!

If I could address that man face to face, I would reply, “If you want to have a party and give gifts, have a party and give gifts, but admit there is no occasion for your celebration other than you want to have it, and stop trying to change Christmas to a secular event!”  How empty one must be to take such extreme steps to express a need to rely on someone else’s deepest convictions of Truth as an excuse to celebrate, and then defend it as a requirement for tolerance from the Christian community, yet that is apparently the atheist position, and just screams for our prayers!

The glaring Truth is that we all woke up in Babylon today, and most of us will wake up in Babylon again tomorrow.  We have a daily choice to follow Jesus or linger in Babylon a little longer.  There is no middle ground, no position of compromise.

Thanksgivukkah, and the unity it inspired, gave us a glimpse of life in the Holy City.

Hang on to that image and draw strength from it.

Blessings & Adventure,

Lynn “lynnibug” Rios