Christmas and Chanukah usually go hand-in-hand, but this year things are a little different. Instead of mistletoe and candy canes, Chanukah will be surrounded by turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. That’s because for the first time in 125 years, Chanukah falls on Thanksgiving.
This early arrival of Chanukah is seen as a chance to look at the Festival of Lights in a different light, beyond its usual cultural comparisons to Christmas and a great opportunity to push culinary boundaries to new heights never seen on either Thanksgiving or Chanukah.
The traditional potato pancake eaten on Chanukah, called a latke, can now made with sweet potatoes. And whereas latkes are usually topped with either sour cream or apple sauce, on Thanksgiving there is no reason to stop there. Not when there’s turkey and gravy on the table.
As for true culinary inspiration, the chefs at the modern Jewish-style bistro Kutsher’s Tribeca have come up with a full three-course Thanksgivukkah dinner, that includes sweet potato latkes topped with melted marshmallows. There’s the traditional Chanukah donut, called a sufganiyot, filled with Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, and, the ultimate triumph of pan-cultural cuisine, a Latin American chocolate mole sauce for the turkey made out of Chanukah gelt.
“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity here,” says owner Zach Kutsher. “It enables us to have a lot of fun and combine the two holidays in a culinary mash-up that really is a celebration of a combined culture.”
When it comes to decorations, one New York City innovator named Anthony Weintraub commissioned his 9-year-old son Asher to design a ceramic or plaster turkey table ornament with nine candle holders in the back — the number needed for a Chanukah menorah. This menorah/turkey hybrid is called a Menurkey, and it reached nearly two times its $25,000 goal on Kickstarter.
The next time the two holidays will overlap is years from now — 2070 and then again in 2165. After that it could be thousands of years before the two holidays meet again.
But the opportunity this year is giving Chanukah fans around the country a reason to celebrate this once-in-an-epoch coincidence: Not only are they calling it Thanksgivukkah, there’s a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and souvenir T-shirts.
“It’s not going happen again, at least not for a very, very long time,” says Jonathan Mizrahi, a quantum physicist at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. “This is more than once in lifetime. Actually, as far as we know, it’s once ever.”
Mizrahi used a statistical computer program to chart the future intersections of the Gregorian calendar, which is used around the world, and the Jewish calendar, which determines holidays like Chanukah. The two calendars are not in sync, which means the Jewish holidays fall on different days each year. Chanukah is almost always in December.
Other Thanksgivukkah fundraising efforts are more charitably oriented. The SoHo Synagogue in downtown Manhattan will partner with a neighboring Soul Cycle to host two “Chanukah Thanks Spinning” classes. The proceeds will be donated to local charities and the synagogue will host a Thanksgivukkah party afterwards, complete with sweaty Soul Cycle riders.
The woman behind the Thanksgivukkah T-shirt and social media presence is Boston-based marketing specialist Dana Gitell, who sees more than just a coincidence of timing between the two holidays.
“There are amazing similarities between the Pilgrims’ quest for religious freedom and what the Maccabees were fighting for,” says Gitell, referring to the Chanukah story of Judah Maccabee, who led the Hebrews’ fight for freedom from the Greeks. “This a great opportunity for Jewish Americans to celebrate this country and for everyone to acknowledge the greatness of our shared religious freedoms.”
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Thanksgivukkah Recipes from Zach Kutsher of Kutsher’s Tribeca.
