Chanukah 2033

The dates

Chanukah is an eight-day festival that begins on 25 Kislev, in the depth of winter, marking the Maccabean victory over Seleucid rule and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is the one festival in the Hebrew calendar whose centre of gravity is the home rather than the synagogue: each evening one more light is kindled than the night before, the lamp is set in a window, and everything else (the doughnuts, the spinning top, the coins given to children) is built around that light. In modern Israel Chanukah also names a season: eight days of school holidays, winter rain, and cities lit from the inside out.

The festival day by day

The revolt that produced a festival

In the second century BCE the Land of Israel was governed by the Seleucid kingdom, one of the successor states carved out of Alexander the Great's empire. King Antiochus IV set out to force the pace of Hellenisation: he banned the practice of Jewish law, installed a foreign cult in the Temple, and punished those who refused.

The revolt broke out in 167 BCE in the village of Modi'in, when Mattathias the priest and his sons refused to sacrifice to idols. What began as a local incident turned into a long war; after Mattathias died his son Judah, called “the Maccabee”, took command. Three years later Jerusalem was back in rebel hands, the Temple was purified, and a new altar replaced the one that had been defiled.

The Book of Maccabees, written not long after the events, describes both the celebration and the decision to repeat it: “And Judah and his brothers and the whole assembly of Israel decreed that the days of the dedication of the altar should be kept on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev, eight days, year by year, with praise and thanksgiving” ¹. It is the earliest surviving account of Chanukah, and there is no miracle in it.

A festival without a book

Chanukah is the exception in the Hebrew calendar: not one verse of the Bible mentions it. The other festivals are commanded in the Torah, Purim has a scroll of its own, but the Books of Maccabees, which record the revolt itself, never entered the Jewish canon. They survived in Greek, preserved by the Church, and the Hebrew text read today is a much later translation back.

The earliest Jewish source that explains what the festival actually is comes some three centuries after the revolt: a short passage in the Babylonian Talmud that opens with a disarmingly plain question: “What is Chanukah?” The answer it gives is domestic rather than military, and almost everything done on the festival today grows out of it.

Around the same period the historian Josephus knew the festival under a different name altogether: the Festival of Lights. He admitted he could not say for certain where the name came from, and guessed that freedom had come to the Jews unexpectedly, like light.

What people actually do

Kindling the lights. Each evening near sunset one further light is lit: one on the first night, eight on the last. The lights are arranged in the chanukiah from left to right and kindled from a ninth flame, the *shamash*, which is not counted among the eight. The lamp goes in a window or a doorway facing outward; this light is not meant to illuminate the room, but to be seen from the street.

Al HaNissim. A short paragraph is added to the prayers and to grace after meals throughout the eight days, retelling the revolt in a few lines. It is almost the only trace of the festival's military side inside the liturgy.

Fried food. Jam doughnuts and potato latkes are the foods most identified with the festival, and the link between them is simple: both are fried in oil. Alongside them runs an old custom of eating dairy, which Rema explains with the story of Judith, who fed the enemy commander cheese ².

Dreidel and Chanukah money. The four faces of the spinning top carry the letters *nun, gimel, hey, pey*: “a great miracle happened here”; outside Israel the last letter is *shin*, “there”. *Chanukah gelt*, coins given to children, is an Ashkenazi custom that survives today mostly as chocolate.

And it is not a day of rest. No work is forbidden on Chanukah, nothing is fasted, and no meal is obligatory. The Shulchan Arukh says so directly: the extra meals people hold “are optional meals, which were not fixed for feasting and rejoicing” ³. What makes these eight days a festival is the lamp.

One small jar of oil

The best-known Chanukah story appears in no source from the time of the revolt. It surfaces first in the Talmud, told in a handful of lines: “When the Greeks entered the Sanctuary they defiled all the oils in it, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed and defeated them, they searched and found only one jar of oil left with the High Priest's seal, containing enough to burn for a single day; a miracle was performed with it, and they lit from it for eight days” ⁴.

It is worth noticing what the sages chose to remember. They had in front of them a successful revolt against an empire, and they put at the centre of the festival a small jar found in a corner. Instead of victory, endurance; instead of an army, one detail that lasted longer than it should have.

The festival's most famous disagreement grows from the same idea. Beit Shammai held that eight lights are kindled on the first night and the number decreases thereafter; Beit Hillel held that one is kindled on the first night and the number increases ⁵. The law follows Beit Hillel, which is why the lamp grows from night to night rather than shrinking.

One raises in holiness

The reason the Talmud gives for Beit Hillel's ruling is four words long: “one raises in matters of holiness and does not lower” ⁵. It is a technical principle of law, and it became a sentence people apply to themselves: what starts small is supposed to grow, not the other way round. On the first night of Chanukah a single flame is barely visible; by the eighth the window is full.

The festival's other axis is the direction it faces. Chanukah is almost the only observance performed for the benefit of whoever is outside: the lamp sits in the window, facing the street, and people who are not celebrating see it anyway. That is where Maimonides' unusual emphasis comes from: “the commandment of the Chanukah lamp is an exceedingly beloved commandment”, and someone with nothing to eat but charity “asks, or sells his cloak, and buys oil and lamps and kindles” ⁶.

A festival born out of a war ends up carrying a single image: a little light, in a window, that adds rather than subtracts.

Common questions about Chanukah

When is Chanukah?
Chanukah always begins on 25 Kislev and runs for eight days. On the civil calendar that falls in December, sometimes running into early January. The exact civil date shifts each year; this year it runs 17-24/12/33.

When is the first candle lit?
On the evening that begins 25 Kislev, after sunset. The Hebrew day starts in the evening, so “the eve of Chanukah” and “the first candle” are in fact the same night.

How long does Chanukah last?
Eight days and eight nights. The closing date moves between 2 and 3 Tevet, because the month of Kislev can have either thirty days or twenty-nine, depending on the year.

Why is Chanukah on a different date every year?
Because the Hebrew year is about eleven days shorter than the civil one, and is brought back into line by a leap month added seven times in every nineteen years. Chanukah therefore drifts across December and returns to roughly the same place every few years.

Does Chanukah always fall in December?
Almost always. In years when the Hebrew calendar runs late the last days can spill into the first days of January, but the first candle is a December date in the overwhelming majority of years.

Chanukah on the calendar: first night, last night, civil dates

The grid at the top of this page shows the days of Chanukah inside the month they fall in, with the Hebrew date and the civil date side by side on every day. You can see at a glance which civil date carries the first candle in the year selected, which weekday it lands on, and where the eighth night closes the festival. The grid also shows Rosh Chodesh Tevet, which always falls within Chanukah, and the Sabbath in the middle of the festival, the one night the lights are kindled before sundown rather than after.
The button above the grid prints it to a single page, portrait or landscape, without the navigation or this text.

• Every festival of the year at a glance: the annual holidays calendar
• The full printable calendar: home page
• The Hebrew month it falls in: Kislev

Related pages

• Printable calendar for December 2033
• The Hebrew month of Kislev 5794
• All the Jewish holidays of 2033
• Printable 2026 Jewish calendar with holidays