Hanukkah 2024/5785 (Hebrew calendar year)
Hanukkah is a joyous eight-day festival that tends to fall somewhere between late November and late December each year. This year, Hanukkah starts at sundown on Wednesday, December 25 and ends at sundown on Thursday, January 2. That’s right – you’ll light the first Hanukkah candle on Christmas day!
Check out our one-stop Hanukkah shop that the HMI team put together for you to help make this year’s Hanukkah celebrations relatable and enjoyable. You’ll find Hanukkah party ideas, holiday 101 guide, tips on navigating the holidays, and more. We hope these handy resources will help you bring the holidays into your home and into your soul.
Hanukkah Party Ideas
Want to host a Hanukkah party for your HMI family? Be sure to apply for an HMI Alumni Micro Grant and let us help you cover some of the costs. Click here for more details about how to get some of that sweet, sweet Hanukkah gelt. Here are some HMI-themed Hanukkah party ideas to get you started! Choose one, pick a few, or try them all!
Fried Food Potluck: Celebrate the miracle of oil by hosting a fried foods potluck! Latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (donuts – here are some ideas for a sweet start) are always great options, but why not invite everyone to bring the best fried foods from their own cultures?
Ugly Sweater Party: Have an ugly holiday sweater contest. Complete with prizes, of course.
Bring Your Own Menorah: Got a spare menorah or three? Invite your friends to bring their own menorahs and watch the light increase together.
Spin to win! Gather your pennies, candy, or Hanukkah gelt (chocolate coins) to add a playful twist to the dreidel tournament. The rules are up to you—just bring your favorite treats and get ready for some fun!
Feeling crafty? Get creative! Try your hand at painting your very own dreidel. Let your creativity flow – the sky’s the limit!
Cocktail Creations: Host a “Best Hanukkah-Themed Cocktail” competition with the mixologists in your cohort.
Lights & Insights
There are so many reasons to get together this time of year! Hanukkah! Christmas! Kwanzaa! Chinese New Year! Secular New Year! We love finding reasons to celebrate together.
This year, the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas overlap. This can serve as a beautiful backdrop for noticing and celebrating the other ways our celebrations overlap that add light and warmth to your relationship and your home. It can also serve as an opportunity to honor and discuss your own unique experiences, memories and traditions around this time of year. Click here for questions that might guide your discussion in illuminating the beautiful similarities and differences in the ways each of us celebrates Hanukkah.
Want to dive deep into these questions with your HMI family? Be sure to apply for an HMI Alumni Micro Grant so we can offset the cost of your insightful convo!
Hanukkah How-Tos
Check out this handy guide that explains how to say the blessings over the candles, light the hanukkiah, make potato latkes, and play dreidel!
Sufganiyot - Jelly Donuts
What are sufganiyot and why do we eat them on Hanukkah?
Sufganiyot are typically jam-filled donuts, though they can be filled with many delicious flavors, creams, or chocolates. During Hanukkah in Israel you can find hundreds of sufganiyot in dozens of flavors lined up in bakery windows across the country. Immigration throughout the 20th century brought diverse Jewish communities together in modern-day Israel, and each brought their unique food cultures with them. Fried dough recipes from across the globe have influenced today’s sufganiyot. They are a celebration of unique cultures and the way these traditions came together, influenced one another, and combined into something new and delicious.
Why is oil an important part of Hanukkah? Along with latkes, sufganiyot are one of the quintessential Hanukkah foods because they are fried in oil, reminding us of the Hanukkah story. Around 160 BCE, a small group of Jewish rebels, the Maccabees, defeated the mighty Greek army. Their first task after victory was to rededicate the Ancient Temple in Jerusalem, which the Greeks desecrated. To rededicate the Temple, the Maccabees needed to light the menorah, a seven-branched candelabra, meant to remain lit at all times. They discovered that only a small amount of oil remained in the Temple just enough to keep the menorah lit for one day. It would take over a week for more oil to arrive, but the Maccabees lit the menorah with that small amount as they hoped and waited for more oil. Miraculously, that small amount of oil lasted eight days! Thanks to this miracle of oil, we celebrate Hanukkah by lighting a hanukkiah, a nine-branched menorah, each night of Hanukkah while enjoying foods cooked in oil.
Our HMI community, too, is a collection of cultures coming together to create something new and the winter holidays are a beautiful time to gather with family and friends and indulge in the sweetness of the season. Whether you get donuts from your favorite local bakery, try a fried dough recipe from the Jewish diaspora, or use our hack below – there’s no party like a sufganiyot party! Click here for a recipe, reflection questions you can dive into while cooking, and different sufganiyot from around the world!
8 Ways to Bring Light this Hanukkah
Hanukkah is called the Festival of Lights because not only does it bring physical light into the darkest time of the year, but because it is also the story of how we brought light into one of the darkest periods of Jewish history.
Today, we witness pain, destruction, and darkness at home, in Israel, and around the world. Just as the Maccabees brought light into the darkness of a desecrated Temple, we too can find ways to bring light into our world today. As we light the Hanukkah menorah for each of the eight nights, we call upon the themes of the holiday to help us find that light. Click here for reflection questions and actions you can take to bring light this holiday season.
Christmas & Hanukkah of it All
For all you history buffs out there, here are some fun facts about the history of Hanukkah and Christmas!
By the 1890s, Christmas was firmly established as America’s most important holiday and the premiere season for gift giving. For the millions of Jewish immigrants who came to America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Hanukkah became a little ambiguous and conflicted because of its proximity on the calendar to Christmas. For Jewish immigrants feeling pressure to shed their European ways, exchanging gifts with neighbors at Christmas time signaled their assimilation and adaptation to America.
While lots of Jewish immigrants embraced Christmas and enjoyed the elevation of Hanukkah because of its proximity to Christmas, this shift induced a lot of anxiety in others (and still does today!). Some Jewish leaders criticized the immigrant Jews who accepted Christmas as an American consumer ritual.
Around the 1920s, merchandisers began advertising their wares as ideal Hanukkah gifts for Jewish customers. Aunt Jemima flour proclaimed itself “the best flour for latkes,” and food purveyors such as Loft’s and Barton’s candies marketed chocolates wrapped in gold foil to simulate Hanukkah gelt (money).
American/Jewish meaning- making around Hanukkah, especially as it relates to Christmas, continues to evolve today. Feelings about Hanukkah and the ways we observe it are as diverse as the families that celebrate it. Some Jewish families keep things as traditional as possible, and others incorporate elements of Christmas that feel right to them. Some Jewish families have only Jewish family members, and others bring many diverse traditions to celebrate together!
