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Thanksgivukkah Is Coming and It Will be the Greatest Night of Our Lives

Due to a once-in-a-lifetime quirk in the calendar, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah fall on at the same time this year. For those gentiles out there, we offer a handy guide to celebrating this hybrid holiday. This won’t happen again for another 70,000 years...

Photo via Wiki Creative Commons

Thanksgivukkah 2013 is just around the corner and no one is more excited for it than me. Okay maybe Rob Reiner. That’s right, Thanksgiving, the national holiday where we give thanks for the previous year’s harvest and the first night of Hanukkah, the Hebrew festival of lights both fall on the same day. This quirk of the calendar has created one giant, starchy, delicious, guilt-riddled holiday for us to enjoy. It’s one of the rare occasions when something secular and something Jewish combines perfectly. It’s basically like if Liev Schrieber and Naomi Watts’ wedding ceremony was made into a national holiday minus the chocolate fountain. It's also the opposite of watching George W. Bush light a menorah… or struggle to say "mazel tov" in that stupid hillbilly accent.

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I don’t know about you but my inner Mandy Patinkin is kvelling! But before we get into all the wondrous things about Thanksgivukkah let’s take a step back and figure out how exactly this “mitzvah” (blessing) happened so that we may adequately thank “Adonai” (God, or as my people call him “G-d”) for allowing us to be alive during this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Photo via Flickr User mamamusings

Thanksgivukkah 2013 is happening because of a rare fluke between the lunisolar Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar in which they both sync up. Because the calendars are calculated in different ways, Hanukkah occurs on a different date every year of the Gregorian calendar. This year, it just so happens to be on Thanksgiving. The last time this occurred was in 1863. Were there even Jews then? I would have hated to celebrate Thansgivukkah 1863—specifically because the plumbing was so terrible. Having to shit out two platter’s worth of my Bubbie’s kugel in a self-dug latrine would certainly put a damper on the evening. Scientists have calculated that Thanksgivukkah won’t happen again until the year 79811. Can you imagine? Comedian David Brenner will be in his 90s by then! That’s a joke for people over 60. (Tell it at Thanksgivukkah to your Aunt Shelley!)

As a Jew I have found that there is a big misconception about Thanksgiving in regards to my people. Some “Gentiles” (non-Jews) seem to think that Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday. I remember specifically in college someone at a party once asking me what my family does for Thanksgiving since we are Jewish. I was shocked and appalled. I looked him dead in the eyes, stood proudly and said, “We do the same thing your family does. We eat turkey and stuffing and watch football with our relatives… then we don ceremonial garb, walk into the woods with torches, and partake in bloodletting a Christian baby to appease Mordegar, the Yiddish God of Strife. Duh.”

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"Jew or Dwarf from The Hobbit" is a hot new holiday party game. Can you guess which is which in this picture? Photo via Flickr User Elvert Barnes

Thanskgivukkah also offers a specific group of a people a special advantage. Historically, Thanksgiving has been known as an ideal time for gay people to come out of the closet to their families. I think it has something to do with that fact that if your relatives can’t handle the news they can just immediately eat their feelings. That’s why if you are considering coming out of the closet soon you should definitely do it on Thanksgivukkah. With the combination of tryptophan from the turkey and fried Crisco oil from the potato latkes coursing through your bigoted Uncle Harvey’s central nervous system he won’t have enough strength to storm out of the house in disgust. Plus there’s Dreidel! It must have been awkward for the first pilgrim to ever come out of the closet on Thanksgiving because back then they didn’t have a word for gay. The only way to let your family know you were gay in colonial times was to bedazzle the buckles on your shoes and give your horse a drag queen name like Layona Davenport or Lady Divine Eichelberger.

And no hybrid holiday would be complete without it’s own set of traditions. The traditions of Thanksgivukkah date back thousands of years and help put a strong emphasis on the importance of family. Some traditions I am personally looking forward to partaking in this year are as follows:

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THE NAGGING OF THE IN-LAWS

This tradition occurs right before you carve the Thanksgivukkah turkey. It is when one of your relatives passive-aggressively brags about your nephew David graduating cum laude from Penn Law.

THE FUTZING OF THE THERMOSTAT

This tradition dates back to the crusades. During a traditional Thanksgivukkah feast (usually right before the main course) the eldest male member of the family walks over to the thermostat, puts on their reading glasses, squints and says out loud three times, “What’s wrong with this fakakta thing? Sheila, do we still have the warranty?”

THE CEREMONIAL CHEWING OF THE TUMS

This always immediately follows the Thanksgivukkah feast. Pretty self-explanatory.

POPPING A SQUAT FOR FORGIVENESS

This directly follows the Ceremonial Chewing of the TUMS by about a half hour or forty-five minutes. This is when you announce to your family that you have to check on the coats in the guest bedroom, then sneak into the upstairs bathroom and mercilessly shit your brains out for twenty-five minutes away from prying eyes. You then splash some water on your face and quietly sneak back downstairs to join the already-in-progress conversation about Loehmann’s Black Friday deals.

PASSING JUDGEMENT ON THE NIECE THAT ISN’T ENGAGED YET

This is almost always the last tradition of the evening. Usually because it involves cursing and doors being slammed.

Are you excited yet? You should be. This is literally the most wonderful time of the year. And although it is the first Thanksgivukkah in over a hundred years it really is starting to take off. Big businesses are even hopping on the Thanksgivukkah bandwagon by incorporating Jewish things into their normal Thanksgiving celebrations. In fact Macy’s just announced they are adding a Mayim Bialik float to this year’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

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Mayim, if you are reading this, call me. I've heard you're single now, and I'm a real mensch. Photo via Flickr User The Daring Librarian

So please, have a safe and bountiful Thanksgivukkah. It won’t happen again for another 70,000 years so make the most of it. Put on some goddamned khakis, shave your beard, and just be thankful you’re not Canadian because they celebrate Thanksgiving in fucking October like savages. And with that I leave you with this…

HAPPY THANKSGIVUKKAH TO ALL!

@jaredmoskowitz