by Anura Guruge
on November 26, 2021
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Wow. Pretty special. There will be nearly two generations who have never celebrated the start of Hanukkah on November 28.
I maintain a ‘dates’ Excel spreadsheet — one sheet with all the dates of Hanukkah from 1900 to 2099. So, I can do these lookups.
Per that spreadsheet, & as you can see from the figure above, the earliest day that Hanukkah can begin seems to be November 27. It was such 8 years ago in 2013. But, the early dates seem to be rare. That would explain the lengthy 46 year gap. So, this is nearly as far apart that Hanukkah can be from Christmas. Closer to Thanksgiving than Christmas.
It will be 30 years before it happens again.
As to when it last started on a Sunday night is much closer at hand. We only have 7 days of the week that it can rotate through. So, the gaps can never get too large. So, we had Sunday starts both in 2019 & 2018.
