The last time this happened was in 2005, which might lead you to think it happens every 19 years, but you’d be wrong. The coincidence of Christmas and Hanukkah is a fortuitous event because the Christian or Gregorian calendar used in most parts of the world, including the United States, is a solar calendar based on the Earth’s position in its orbit around the Sun .

However, the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar – it is based on the phases of the moon and also the position of the Earth relative to the sun. (In contrast, the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, with each new moon marking the start of a different month.)

To further emphasize the randomness, all three calendars are based on different religious events (e.g. the supposed birth of Christ, the Old Testament date for the creation of the world, and the Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina).

According to the Gregorian calendar, this Christmas/beginning of Hanukkah marks the 25th day of the 12th month of the year 2024. In the Hebrew calendar it is the 24th day of the ninth month of the year 5785 and in the Islamic calendar it is the 23rd day of the sixth month of the year 1446.

Is it any wonder that there are so many disputes and such great discrepancies between different religious, political, ethnic and cultural groups when we cannot even agree on the day, the month or the year?

Apart from that, I don’t want to talk about religion or the calendar here, but rather about the topic of “celebrations”.

At the heart of our celebrations are the traditions and rituals that we bring with us and that we pick up along the way.

For example the Christmas tree; When my friend and I met, she insisted that we get a “living tree,” which was something new for me. That was over 30 years ago and since then we have been bringing live trees into our living room as part of our Christmas celebrations.

We keep them in a large pot in the garden all year round and bring them in about a week before Christmas to decorate and decorate with lights and ornaments. Then, about every five years, when it’s time for a new tree and it’s still healthy and thriving, we plant it. This is also part of our ritual.

Then there are the lights on the house; We hang them from the roofline as a sign of community spirit and collaboration. As we get older and become a little more cautious about climbing onto the roof, our display changes somewhat, but we continue to string up the lights as part of our celebration.

We sing Christmas carols – both secular ones like “Rudolph” and “Jingle Bells” and religious ones like “Silent Night” and “The First Noel”, even those relating to the birth of Jesus or Christ our Lord are sung – more as a celebration of warmth and togetherness than as a witness to religious faith.

And of course we have our food rituals. Between the baking and the planning and the preparation and figuring out how to fit everyone and what special to cook (keeping in mind the vegetarians among us) and how to serve it (hot) and what to go with the toast, the Christmas feast says that Food festival takes place throughout the month.

I enjoy these rituals and appreciate our celebrations. It saddens me to think of the people living in war-torn countries or living on the streets, devastated by reality, and I wonder if and hope they still find reason to celebrate in the midst of the brutality can.

With that in mind, I honor and celebrate everyone who celebrates – whatever and however they celebrate (assuming it doesn’t harm or demean others).

So I say Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah… to life, to health, to friendship, to old times, to the New Year… to you, to me, to us! Let’s celebrate!