{"id":8082,"date":"2013-06-10T06:34:47","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T13:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simonburrow.com\/\/?p=8082"},"modified":"2013-06-09T07:40:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T14:40:59","slug":"hanukkah-and-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=8082","title":{"rendered":"Hanukkah and Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

The First Night of Hanukkah will be on Thanksgiving this Year.\u2028<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This has never happened before.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2028Thanksgiving is set as the fourth Thursday in November, meaning the latest it can be is 11\/28. 11\/28 is also the earliest Hanukkah can be.\u2028The Jewish calendar repeats on a 19 year cycle, and Thanksgiving \u2028repeats on a 7 year cycle. You would therefore expect them to coincide\u2028 roughly every 19×7 = 133 years. Looking back, this is approximately\u2028 correct \u2013 the last time it would have happened is 1861. However,\u2028 Thanksgiving was only formally established by President Lincoln in\u20281863. So, it has never happened before.\u2028\u2028<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Why won’t it ever happen again?\u2028<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The reason is because the Jewish calendar is very slowly getting out of sync with the solar calendar, at a rate of 4 days per 1000 years.\u2028This means that while presently Hanukkah can be as early as 11\/28, \u2028over the years the calendar will drift forward, such that the earliest\u2028 Hanukkah can be is 11\/29. The next time Hanukkah falls on 11\/28 is \u20282146, which is a Monday. Therefore, 2013 is the only time Hanukkah \u2028will ever overlap with Thanksgiving.\u00a0 \u2028\u2028Of course, if the Jewish calendar is never modified in any way, then it will slowly move forward through the Gregorian calendar, until it\u2028 loops all the way back to where it is now. So, Hanukkah would again \u2028fall on Thursday, 11\/28…in the year 79,811. Given our trajectory it is fair to say humans won\u2019t be here then. And\u2028 if there are no humans, the holidays will be cancelled.\u2028\u2028<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So on November 28th 2013, enjoy your turkey and your latkes. It has\u2028 never happened before, and it will never happen again.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The First Night of Hanukkah will be on Thanksgiving this Year.\u2028 This has never happened before. \u2028Thanksgiving is set as the fourth Thursday in November, meaning the latest it can be is 11\/28. 11\/28 is also the earliest Hanukkah can be.\u2028The Jewish calendar repeats on a 19 year cycle, and Thanksgiving \u2028repeats on a 7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-simon-says"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-26m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8084,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions\/8084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}