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What is Hanukkah and what does it celebrate?

Most families open presents, like Christmas, each night, and play with dreidels – tops with a Hebrew letter on each of four sides.
A Jewish student from a Yeshiva religious school lights a candle on a menorah during the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, the festival of lights, in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

Hanukkah starts tonight, but what exactly is it? And what do Jewish people do to celebrate? Here’s your first (and only class) of Hanukkah 101!

For starters, you can spell it lots of different ways, since the Hebrew alphabet is so different from English, but Hanukkah and Chanukah are probably the most common.

Religiously, it's not considered by Jews to be one of their most important holidays, but since it usually falls near Christmas, it often seems that way. But Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Rosh Hashana (the New Year), and Passover are all considered more “holy” than Hanukkah.

The holiday celebrates the real-life victory by Judah and the Maccabees over their oppressors around 200 B-C-E, when they regained control of the Holy Temple.

The reason Hanukkah lasts eight nights is because the story goes that there was only enough oil in the Temple to last for one night, but a miracle happened, and it lasted for eight nights. So Jewish people light a candelabra - called a Menorah in Hebrew to commemorate that.

A menorah burns in the White House. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Among the oil-based foods Jews often eat during Hanukkah: latkas (potato pancakes).

Potato Latkes (Photo by Meal Makeover Moms, via flickr creative commons) 

Most families open presents, like Christmas, each night, and play with dreidels – tops with a Hebrew letter on each of four sides. Each letter starts a word that translates to a “GREAT MIRACLE HAPPENED THERE."

Happy Hanukkah!

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