There are Hanukkah cards and Hanukkah wrapping paper and Happy Hanukkah bears and Hanukkah Oreos. Not bad for what Rabbi Josh Aaronson calls a "minor festival."
It may be the Jewish celebration Christians are most familiar with, but Hanukkah actually ranks further down the list of important Jewish religious holidays, says Rabbi Aaronson. Major holidays include the weekly Sabbath and the yearly observations of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, he says.
This year Hanukkah begins Friday, Dec. 19. The eight nights of Hanukkah begin on the 25th day of Kislev, which is the third month of the Jewish calendar, generally corresponding to the December of the Gregorian calendar. It is this proximity to Christmas that has made Hanukkah more noticeable to non-Jews — and more commercial, Rabbi Aaronson says.
"The giving of gifts at Hanukkah is unquestionably something that has been assimilated into our practices from Christmas," he says.
Traditionally, he says, Jews were more likely to exchange gifts during the Purim holiday.
"I think we do more for Hanukkah because it's right around Christmastime," says Michele Straube, a Reconstructionist Jew who worships at Chavurah B'yachad in Salt Lake City. "You do compete somewhat."
Straube says when her children were young they wanted to know "why don't we have a tree, why don't we have one day when we get a million presents?"
Straube says she and her husband viewed those questions as an opportunity to explain diversity. These days, the family picks a theme for the eight days of Hanukkah and gives a gift around that theme — books, for example, games or "tzedakah," a donation to charity.
"We're still acquiring something, but they're smaller somethings," Straube says.
Through the ages, says Rabbi Yossi Mandel of Chabad Lubavitch of Utah, Hanukkah was celebrated more privately, "simply because Jews didn't want to attract attention," because attention sometimes led to persecution. These days, though, Hanukkah is now a public as well as a private celebration.
In the Salt Lake Valley, that celebration includes Hanukkah on Ice with a menorah lighting at the Kearns Olympic Ice Oval on Sunday, Dec. 21, 3 to 5 p.m. The event is open to the public and includes skating, doughnuts and traditional latkes.
Hanukkah commemorates the victory of Jews living under the rule of a Greek king who banned Judaism in occupied Judea. As persecution grew, including the killing of thousands of Jews, a rebel group led by Judah Maccabee revolted and recaptured a sacred Jewish temple in 165 B.C.
Hanukkah, known as the Festival of Lights, also commemorates what happened after the Maccabees and their comrades, preparing to rededicate their temple, discovered that King Antiochus IV and his followers had defiled every tin but one of the oil traditionally used to light the menorah. It would take a week to press olives and extract more oil, and the remaining tin contained enough to light the menorah for just one day. But the menorah candles burned for eight days.
Hanukkah, says Rabbi Aaronson, "celebrates the idea that all of us can benefit from God's providence."
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