Even though it only comes once in every 70,000 years, does
Thanksgivingukkah truly qualify as a bona-fide American holiday?
By: Ringo Bones
May be the fact that it only comes once in every 70,000
years that nobody in America, never mind elsewhere in the world, seems to
really care if Thanksgivingukkah is a bona-fide holiday or not, it seems that
everyone is just celebrating it in blissful ignorance. Never mind Thanksgivingukkah becoming the
latest addition of the American English lexicon. But indeed, it has an origin
story that legitimizes its claim as a bona-fide American holiday.
It may have been the fact that this 2013 Thanksgiving and
the first day of the Jewish High Holiday Hanukkah both fell on the same day.
The “Thanksgiving” part of Thanksgivingukkah may be over but there still are a
few days of gift giving left for Hanukkah 2013. But unbeknown to most of us,
Thanksgiving and Hanukkah could have a very justifiable reason to share a
kinship with beyond a quirk of the Gregorian Calendar that we won’t be seeing
another Thanksgiving and Hanukkah combo for another 70,000 years.
Believe it or not, both Hanukkah and Thanksgiving are born
out of a civil war. Hanukkah’s origins were the Macabbean Revolt of 167 to 160
BC which was for all intents and purposes a civil war that set the salient
theme of Hanukkah. And despite its 17th Century Puritan theme of the
American Thanksgiving, it was during the American Civil War when the then US
President Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed that the last Thursday of November be
designated as Thanksgiving as a morale booster for his Union troops back in
1863. Even if Thanksgivingukkah is nothing more than a combination of
Thanksgiving and Hanukkah just because a quirk in the Gregorian Calendar made
them both fell on the last Thursday of November this 2013, we won’t be obliged
to celebrate it for the next 69,000 years.