So Thanksgivukkah is soon to be upon us, and the Hanukkah/Thanksgiving mashup is truly a once in a lifetime event.
In fact, Thanksgivukkah is so rare that it’s not even once in a lifetime — it’s a once in a hundreds of thousands of lifetimes event, as by today’s calendaring standards, it won’t happen again for 70,000 years. So this Thanksgivukkah, make it count.
And what is Thanksgivukkah, if you didn’t figure it out? It’s the phenomenon of the former holiday (Hanukkah) coinciding with the latter, Thanksgiving, and forming a super holiday from which the leftovers will be talked about for generations to come.
The AP explains exactly how rare Thanksgivukkah is, telling readers :
“There’s the number crunching: The last time it happened was 1888, or at least the last time since Thanksgiving was declared a federal holiday by President Lincoln, and the next time may have Jews lighting their candles from spaceships 79,043 years from now, by one calculation.”
So Thanksgivukkah is rare, but as we mentioned, the food seems to be the big star of this holiday super-alliance — and Thanksgivukkah recipes are already circulating on the web.
Thus far, we’ve heard of a ton of dishes mashed up for the holiday, including Manischewitz-brined Turkey, pumpkin spice latkes , and challah stuffing. Challah! Also something called a “menurkey.”
Rabbi David Paskin of the Kehillah Schechter Academy in Norwood, Massachusetts co-wrote a song for the one-off occasion called “The Ballad of Thanksgivukkah,” and Paskin boasts a school closest to Plymouth Rock… so he’s basically got this whole holiday on lock.
The closest thing we have to a Thanksgivukkah expert and scribe mused upon the similarities between the two holidays and their themes of hope, resilience, and a Hail Mary pass (apologies for religiously mixed metaphors), and adds that the phenomenon is truly an “only in America” thing:
“It’s pretty amazing to me that in this country we can have rich secular and rich religious celebrations and that those of us who live in both worlds can find moments when they meet and can really celebrate that convergence. There are a lot of places in the world where we would not be able to do that.”
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Like many non-Jews, I plan to celebrate Thanksgivukkah in another totally American fashion — by seeing which of my Jewish friends will invite me over. If you want to get a leg up on your Thanksgivukkah planning, you can become a fan on Facebook and find tips, recipes and other info on the rare holiday. Gobble tov , everyone!
