Hanukkah, the Jewish "festival of lights," begins at sunset on
Saturday, Dec. 8, and ends at sunset on Sunday, Dec. 16. When
many people think of Hanukkah—sometimes spelled “Chanukah”
because of its pronunciation in Hebrew—they think of dreidels,
the nine-armed version of a menorah called a Chanukiah, and Adam
Sandler. But here are a few things you might not know about the
world’s most oft-misspelled eight-day holiday: 1. The dates of
Hanukkah are always different. Well, at least to our calendar.
If you had a Hebrew calendar on-hand, you’d see that Hanukkah
always begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month Kislev. For
our Gregorian calendar, Hanukkah can begin anywhere between late
November and late December, depending on the year. But why the
25th? Because… 2. Hanukkah commemorates the victory of a small
Jewish army over an empire. On that 25th day of Kislev,
somewhere around the 2nd century BC, a Jewish rebel group called
the Maccabees fought against a much larger army made up of
Greeks and Macedonians. The