The Importance of Hanukkah

The holidays give us the opportunity to share traditions and make more memories with our friends and family. The month of December includes a few multi-cultural holiday traditions to celebrate such as Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the Hebrew word meaning dedication that helps justify the importance of Hanukkah. Hanukkah celebrates the bravery and the victory of the Jews’ defeat over the Syrian-Greeks.

Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of lights, when Jewish families get together and remember the struggle for religious freedom. For eight nights Jewish families light a candle for each night at sundown to celebrate menorah candelabrum. The Hanukkah candles are placed on a nine-branched ceremonial lamp. The middle branch is for the candle used to light the other eight branches. One branch is lit each night for the eight nights and the candles are lit from left to right. During the candle celebration, members of the family recite blessings. This year Hanukkah begins on  December 6th at sundown, until the 14th of December.

As well as the tradition of lighting the candles, families celebrate with food, music, readings, games and exchanging of gifts for the eight nights. The food traditionally prepared for Hanukkah is cooked in oil, which represents the legend of the jar of oil that lasted eight days. Latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly donuts) are two favored foods cooked for Hanukkah. The festival of lights also celebrates with music. A few popular songs sung during the festival of lights are Ma’Oz Tzur, Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah, Light One Candle, The Latke Song and I Have a Little Dreidel.

The dreidel is a significant  toy used during a Hanukkah game, which is also the German meaning of “spinning top.” This game is played with small objects such as coins, chocolate money or buttons to gamble with. Each player spins the dreidel and has the chance to guess what side it will land on out of the four sides. Each side displays a Hebrew word such as nun (take nothing), gimme (take everything), hey (take half) and shin (put one in). Here is a link which recommends and supplies fun games, recipes, songs, stories and many other fun activities to celebrate during the Hanukkah celebration.

Tayla M.

Boston Tutoring Services