Thanksgiving And Hanukkah Will Overlap This Year, A Ridiculously Rare Event

Two holidays renowned for good eating will overlap this year: Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. While this might not sound too outrageous, when you think about it it's actually a pretty bizarre occurrence: Hanukkah almost always falls in December, sometimes as late as to overlap with Christmas. Thanksgiving also falls on the last Thursday of November, which is also pretty late this year, the 28th. Because neither of these holidays have fixed dates (in the Gregorian calendar, at least), in order for the two to sync up Hanukkah needs to fall unusually early, and Thanksgiving unusually late. And that's exactly what will happen this year.

This site goes into pretty deep detail about why exactly this will happen, but all you need to know is that it's only happened once before, in 1888, and the next time it will happen will be about 78,000 years from now.

So what does this all mean? Because the first night of Hanukkah will be the night before Thanksgiving, if you celebrate the holiday you can expect to get your second gift after dinner's over. You also might want to incorporate some traditional Hanukkah fare, like potato pancakes and jelly donuts, into your usual Thanksgiving menu. Actually, a potato pancake topped with turkey, cranberry sauce, and gravy sounds pretty delicious.