Thanksgivingkuh

When I first heard about Thanksgivingkuh, it somehow did not sound right to me.  It is a sort of comical take on the extremely rare occurance of the American secular holiday, Thanksgiving, and the first day of the Jewish religious holiday, Hanukkah, occurring on the same day.  The next time this convergence will occur is on 28 November 79,811.   Since the Hanukkah festival lasts for eight days, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah have and will continue to occur on other days within the eight-day period over the years.  The last time both holidays fell on the first day of the festival was on 29 November 1888.  Hanukkah 2013 began on Wednesday 27 November because the Jewish day begins at sundown.  Since the Jewish calendar is lunar-based and on a nineteen year cycle, the festivals move around in date much more than in the common Gregorian Calendar.  Hanukkah begins each year on the 25^th day of the month of Kislev.

Thansgivingkuh (Thanksgiving + Hanukkah) cards have appeared along with a menurkey (menorah + turkey).  A menurkey is a turkey decoration whose tail holds the candles normally place in the sacred menorah.

I asked a Jewsih friend what he thought of Thanksgivingkuh and he said he had not heard of it but that he was amused. My friend did not share my feeling that the merging of the two holidays, one secular and one religious, was somehow sacrilegious.  Though Hanukkah is a religious holiday, many American Jews see it as overly secularized and commercialized.  Some see it as a time to give gifts so that their children will not be upset about not celebrating Christmas.

Hanukkah celebrates a Jewish military victory in 165 BC/BCE over the Greek/Syrian army of Antiochus Epiphanes after which the candle in the Temple burned for eight days on a supply of oil sufficient for only one day.  The battle ended on 25 Kislev. This was seen as an affirmation from God of the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.  The word “Hanukkah” derives from the Hebrew verb חנך   which means “to dedicate.”  The festival is mentioned in the New Testament at John 10:22-23.  The events of Hanukkah are recounted in the apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees.

Rachel Gurevitz, the Senior Rabbi at Congregation B.nai Shalom in Westborough, Massacusetts, sees Thanksgivingkuh as a chance to discuss Jewish and American history with children, seeing a convergence of meaning in both holidays.  Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, on the Fox News Channel, said essentially the same thing.

I am not a humorless Scrooge, but Thanksgivingkuh still strikes me as questionable.

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I am not sure who first pointed this out, but Hanukkah, from a Christian perspective, is very important.  If Antiochus Epiphanes had succeeded in basically exterminating the Jewish religion, then Jesus would probably not have been born as a Jew.   Jesus had to be truly human, He had to be truly divine, and He had to be Jewish.  Salvation comes through the Jews (John 4: 22).  God used the Jewish nation over the centuries to reveal Himself in a manner intellible to man’s limited understanding.  All of history before the Crucifixion was a preparation and an explanation of what God is like and what the Crucifixion and Resurrection mean.