Time of Event: Start Time: 4:45 PM (Sunset is at 4:57 PM)
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Attributes: Watch for livestock: Did you notice the nearby bison?
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Terrain: How far away did you have to park and how long did it take you to find parking? Did you notice the steps?
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What to Bring: Yourself!
(If you wish to, bring a candle and something to light it with.)
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Activity: If you wish to participate, we will each state our caching name, where we’re from, and something we’re thankful for as we light a candle. No pressure. You can still hang out with us if you attend only to log the event!
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Afterward: You may be interested to know:
At the Gene Leahy Mall: The 2013 Holiday Lights Festival.
Music performance beginning at 5:30 PM.
Mayor Jean Stothert will be there for the turning on of the lights display at 6:00 PM.
There will be a free family-friendly concert at the Holland Performing Arts Center at 7:00 PM.
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History:
In a rare alignment of calendars, the first day of Hanukkah will fall on the same day as Thanksgiving this year: Nov. 28.
It won’t happen again for 70,000 years.
Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of each November, using the Gregorian calendar. Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish holiday, is determined using the Hebrew calendar, which can have between 353 and 385 days per year. The start date of the Festival of Lights varies, typically falling in December. The first day of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving haven’t coincided like this since 1888 and, according to one calculation, won’t coincide again until the year 79811. Others who have also done the math note that the first night of Hanukkah - remember, the holiday begins at sundown - will converge with Thanksgiving as early as 2070.
This year, Nov. 28 is Thanksgiving and the first full day of the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, which begins at sundown the previous night.
The quirk of Thanksgivukkah is that the Hebrew calendar, which follows the sun and the moon, and the Gregorian calendar, where Thanksgiving sits on the fourth Thursday of November, has aligned this year so that the two holidays are on the same day for the first time since 1888, 25 years after President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a holiday.
Chanukah was declared a Jewish national holiday 2178 years ago. Thanksgiving was declared a national American holiday on the last Thursday of every November by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Before then, Thanksgiving was celebrated on different dates in different states, so we won’t count those. But, using a date converter, you will see that Thanksgiving coincided with the first day of Chanukah on November 29, 1888. It also coincided with the fifth day of Chanukah on November 30, 1899.
On November 28, 1918, Thanksgiving was on Chanukah eve. But since it’s still Thanksgiving until midnight, and Jewish days begin at night, that would still mean that Jewish Americans would have eaten their turkeys that Thanksgiving to the light of their first Chanukah candle.
It gets more complicated. Originally, Thanksgiving was always on the last Thursday of November. In 1936, FDR decided it would be good for the economy to push Thanksgiving back a little, so he declared the fourth Thursday of that November to be Thanksgiving—even though there were five Thursdays to November that year. In 1942, that became federal law. But not all states went along with it. As late as 1956, Texas was still celebrating Thanksgiving a week later than the rest of the country.
Which means that if you were a Texan Jewish family, you would be eating that turkey to the light of your first Chanukah light in 1945 and 1956.
Will it ever happen again? Interesting question. If we project forward, assuming that:
- Thanksgiving will be celebrated on the same schedule,
- The people celebrating Thanksgiving will continue following the Gregorian calendar without modification,
- The Jewish calendar will continue on its current 19-year cycle,
…then the next time the two will coincide would be when Thanksgiving falls on Chanukah eve in the year 2070. That would repeat itself in 2165.
The cache name is based on the amateur radio operator phonetic alphabet, continuing a theme for my caches.
--... ...-- and Happy Caching!
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Congratulations to ardgo2112 for First to Find!
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