Hanukkah Time
Hanukkah comes early this year, in the way that Jewish holidays seem always to be early, or late, but never on time because it’s not at all clear what that means. In America, we live by two calendars. They rarely match, but they do instruct.
When Hanukkah is late — that is, close to Christmas — it is engulfed by the merry mania of that period. Forced to distinguish itself from the ongoing commercial explosion, Hanukkah inevitably is sucked into the contemporary fiction that assigns every American a stake in the holiday season when, in fact, all we Jews are waiting for are the after-Christmas sales.
But when Hanukkah is early — that is, close to Thanksgiving — it has the space to stand on its own. Coming so soon after the national ritual of giving thanks, Hanukkah allows us to claim our own gratitude, for light and freedom, for simple pleasures, for hot oil and warm doughnuts, for miracles if that’s what you believe.
To all our readers: a freylekhn khanike, Hanukkah sameach.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO