Christmas Day, which commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, is unusual in that it also coincides with the first night of Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple nearly two centuries ago.
Christmas is celebrated on December 25th, and Hanukkah (also spelled Hanukkah) falls on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. However, while Christendom uses a solar calendar, the Jewish calendar uses both a solar and lunar calendar.
Because a lunar year is 11 days shorter than a solar year, Jews add an extra month (a leap year) every few years to keep their holidays in the same season. (The Islamic world uses a lunar calendar, and holidays start earlier each year without exception.)
Once every 19 years, this pattern returns the Jewish and solar calendars to exactly the same point in time. So the last “Christmas” was in 2005. The holidays often overlap, but only this year and every 19 years thereafter. That means the first night of Hanukkah is also Christmas Day.
In 2016, Hanukkah, another form of “Krismuqah”, began on Christmas Eve.
(Hanukkah and Thanksgiving sometimes coincidentally overlap, but it's even rarer because Thanksgiving is not held on a fixed date and is celebrated on the last Thursday of November.)
In Israel, joint celebrations of Christmas and Hanukkah have led to several joint celebrations, particularly in the city of Haifa, where Jews and Arabs coexist relatively unproblematically.
This coastal city is home to Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as the Ahmadiyya Muslims, persecuted in parts of the Islamic world, and the international headquarters of the Baha'i faith, persecuted by the Islamic regime. . It started in Iran).
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. he is the author of Agenda: What should President Trump do in his first 100 days?available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of Trumpian Virtues: Lessons and Legacy of the Donald Trump Presidencynow available on Audible. He is the recipient of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpolak.
