The eight-day Jewish festival starts this Sunday
Jewish communities will start celebrating Hanukkah this weekend, with major public events planned across Greater Manchester over the eight nights of the festival. The annual festival involves lighting candles on a menorah, eating fried foods and spinning dreidels.
The first night of the festival, which falls on different dates each year, lands on Sunday 14 December, 2025. Judaism follows the Jewish Calendar, which tracks time using lunar months and solar years.
The eight-day event, which celebrates the stories of the Maccabees triumphing over their oppressors, sees events take place across Greater Manchester. Menorahs are displayed in public spaces with communal lighting ceremonies hosting across the city-region throughout the week.
Throughout the week, menorahs will be paraded on cars throughout Greater Manchester too. Here’s everything you need to know.
What is Hanukkah?
Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates the story of the Maccabees – Jews who rebelled against King Antiochus, the Seleucid ruler of Judea and Samaria. In the second century B.C. modern-day Israel was ruled by the Seleucids who were Greek-Syrian. They tried to force the Jews not to follow their religion.
A small band of Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, rose up and defeated them. After they liberated the second temple, a miracle was said to have happened.
A multi-branched candelabra known as a menorah was lit and despite the Maccabees only finding a small drop of oil, enough to burn for one day, the oil ended up lasting for eight nights – enough time for more oil to be resupplied.
When is Hanukkah?
The ‘festival of light’ usually falls in December, but as it follows the Jewish lunisolar calendar, it can fall in late November or coincide with Christmas. The celebration takes place in the longest and darkest month of the year.
To mark the miracle, Hanukkah lasts for eight days, starting on the 25th of Kislev, four days before the new moon – the darkest night of the month.
This year, the evening of Sunday, December 14, marks the start of Hanukkah. The eight-day celebration will end on the evening of Monday, December 22.
How is Hanukkah celebrated?
The traditional celebrations of the Jewish wintertime ‘festival of lights’ involves a nightly menorah lighting, special prayers and foods fried in oil. One extra candle is lit each night until all eight are burning on the final night.
Each candle on the nine-branch candelabra, which is called the hanukkiah, is lit by the shamash – a special candle which sits a higher or lower than the rest. Children play with dreidels – square spinning tops – marked with one of four Hebrew letters on each side which stand for “a great miracle happened there”.
The dreidel gambling game stems from the Greek-Syrian rule when Jews were prevented from studying the Torah, the Hebrew bible, and so whenever a soldier walked by, they would play with dreidels to hide their learning. As the Hanukkah miracle involved oil, it is customary to eat foods fried in oil – traditionally in Europe this includes potato latkes and jam-filled doughnuts.
What do you say at Hanukkah?
There are different spellings of ‘Hanukkah’ in English, which is often spelt ‘Chanukah’. To wish someone a happy Hanukkah, you can say Hanukkah Sameakh which is pronounced sah-MEY-akh using a hard ‘k’ sound from the back of the throat.
