Giving Thanks for Hanukkah

Hanukkah really is on the same day every year… just on a different calendar.

In 2013, the first day of Hanukkah was on Thanksgiving. In 2014, the first day was on December 17. In 2016, the first day of Hanukkah [was] on Christmas Day.

How can this be? Why is it so confusing? Why can’t Hanukkah always be on the same day? After all, Thanksgiving has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November for more than 70 years. Kwanzaa always begins on December 26. New Year’s Eve is always celebrated on December 31. And many Christians have been celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25 since the fourth century.

So why does the Festival of Lights fall on Thanksgiving [one] year and on Christmas in 2016? Why does the date keep shifting?

Actually, it doesn’t. The first night of Hanukkah is always on the 25th day of the month of Kislev on the Jewish calendar.  

Sunrise, Sunset

The dates of Jewish holidays do not change from year to year. It’s simply that the Jewish calendar is based on a lunar year, which is shorter than a solar year.

A solar year is the time it takes the earth to go around the sun once. There are 365 days in 12 months in the solar year — well, 365¼ days, to be more precise. Most people in the world use the Gregorian calendar, which is based on a solar year.

A lunar calendar follows the phases of the moon. Like the solar year, the lunar year also has 12 months, but each lunar month has only 29 or 30 days. At the end of a lunar year, only 354 or 355 days have passed. In addition, the days on the Jewish calendar begin at sundown. And since the sun goes down at a different time each night, the length of each day is also different from the 24-hour days on the Gregorian calendar.  

This means that every year, the solar and lunar calendars differ by about 11 days. In order for the holidays to fall in the correct seasons, an adjustment needs to be made to the lunar calendar every three years. Likewise, we adjust the solar calendar every four years. You know that adjustment as leap day: February 29.

Sound confusing? It is. But what isn’t confusing is the spirit of the season. Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate all that you have. Hanukkah is a celebration of miracles that helped to keep the Jewish people alive. What’s important is that people all over the world continue to celebrate their traditions — on whatever day they happen to fall!