On the Jewish calendar, the holidays are either early or late. They’re never on time. This year, the holidays are very late.
I like to think Hanukah, which is traditionally not the gift giving holiday, moved to take advantage of Christmas sales. But really it’s a calendar quirk.
Chanukah or Hanukkah or Chanuka — or however the hell you want to spell it — begins on the 25th of Kislev or the day after Christmas this year.
Kislev’s one of the 12 months on the lunar calendar that’s used to figure when Jewish holidays occur. The new month begins on the new moon. And since it takes 28 and a half days for the moon to orbit the earth, half the months are 28-day months and the rest are 29 days.
But without leap years, the seasons would quickly get out of whack. The Muslim calendar is also a lunar calendar but it does not adjust the days with leap years. That’s because it’s strictly a religious calendar. So Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, moves back around the secular calendar by a couple of weeks a year.
The Jewish calendar is an agricultral as well as religious calendar, so leap years are necessary. So seven out of every 19 years are leap years when an extra 28-day month is added. During those years, an extra Adar (which falls around March) is added. Officially, those months are known as Adar I and Adar II during leap years.
That keeps the holidays in line within a five-week window. Chanuka is usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But if the leap year was added the previous spring and things align just right, Hanukah may begin as late as the day after Christmas and the eight day holiday will spill over into the new secular year.
Next year it’ll push back 11 days. And the next times the two holidays will overlap is in 2035 and then in 2054.
If a leap year is added a year late, the previous Chanukkah will overlap with Thanksgiving.
Isn’t using two calendars confusing? Not at all. In fact, the third calendar to watch is the Chinese calendar to make sure Chinese New Years
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