Seattle is currently under a Winter Storm Warning (!) for Saturday night. If this actually happens, this will be the third year in a row in which Seattle has had a significant storm on Hanukkah Eve*. A brief history:
December 14, 2006: This storm brought both hurricane-force wind and flooding and was officially (seriously) dubbed the Hanukkah Eve Windstorm of 2006 by the National Weather Service.
December 3, 2007: This was the wettest day in Seattle history, courtesy of our friend Pineapple Express.
December 20, 2008: ???
*The term “Hanukkah Eve” can be tricky. Since the day starts at sundown on a traditional Hebrew calendar, Hanukkah actually begins the evening before the date it says on your calendar (assuming it’s not a Hebrew one). That means that Hanukkah Eve is 2 days before whatever the calendar says.
Hanukkah Eve? There is no “Hanukkah Eve” in Judaism. This is a made-up (though amusing) humorous term, combining the concept of “Christmas Eve” with the “night before,” or rather, the FIRST NIGHT, of Hanukkah.
Hanukkah and Christmas occur loosely around the same time of year, and both are celebrated with candles and sweets, and both may be considered a winter turning-point, but the two holidays are not related, and have next to nothing in common.
BTW, Hanukkah is not a Jewish “holiday,” a term reserved for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, far more serious than Hanukkah in Judaism, but technically a “festival.”
And the proper term is EREV HANUKKAH, not “Hanukkah Eve.”
And there is ONLY ONE Erev Hanukkah, so I don’t know where this “two days” stuff is coming from. It’s simple, and very hard to confuse. The first candle is lit, according to your community’s minhag (custom) after sunset or after nightfall, the day (evening) before the day marked HANUKKAH on most calendars. (Nightfall = when stars are visible, or a range of minutes after sunset, from 18 to 72 depending on rabbinical opinion and minhag.)
Note: Friday night is the HUGE, MAJOR, SERIOUS (!!!) exception to Chanukkah candle-lighting times, because on Friday night, Chanukkah candles MUST be lit BEFORE the Shabbos (the Sabbath, Friday evening through Saturday evening) candles, which are lit very strictly 18 minutes before sunset.
Excepting Friday evenings, it is O.K. to light the Chanukkah candles late, if it’s necessary, whenever it can be managed, since nightfall comes early in winter.
The Hebrew term for a “holiday” when it’s a festival (such as Hanukkah) is “chag.” The CH in “chag,” like the H or Ch in Hanukkah/Chanukah/Chanukkah/Hanukah itself, is pronounced with a “velar fricative,” a strong, hard H sound like a cat hissing. Instead of the usual breathy H sound, the back of the tongue moves up closer to where the roof of the mouth meets the throat, or the “soft palate.” You may have heard this sound in the Yiddish word “chutzpah.” It’s somewhat close to, but not exactly like, the “ch” sound in the Scottish word “loch.” Imagine you’re a cat, very surprised and emphatically hissing “HHHHHHH!!!” with your mouth shaped to say “K,” and you’ve probably got it.
You can wish someone “Happy Hanukkah” in Hebrew by saying “Chag Sameach!” (happy holiday!) or more specifically “Chag Hanukkah Sameach!”
(Bonus trivia points for the first person who can say what the LAST day of Hanukkah is called!)
maybe the weather is not guided by the Hebrew calendar but by Brett Favre. It snowed last time he visited Qwest field and he will be here again tomorrow.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/94456-in-other-newssnowy-
In response to the comment above, could we call it CHanukka-eve-day storm?
Actually, I think that technically, Hanukkah isn’t a chag (although everyone says “chag sameach”), since a chag is really only a chag regel, a pilgrimage festival. The more technically accurate term is a moed. But that’s VERY pedantic of me.