Tag: Passover

. . . and Happy Hanukkah

Each year, during the time many people wish others “Merry Christmas,” a number of well-meaning individuals (bless their hearts) tack on “and Happy Hanukkah.” Being an inter-faith couple, my wife and I hear this a lot.

Yet these are different celebrations. The primary thing they have in common is that they occur at about the same time of the year.

Christmas is one of two High Holy Days in Christianity, second only to Easter. In this sense, it corresponds to Rosh Hashanah, one of two High Holy Days in Judaism, second only to Yom Kippur. Also, Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. Advent, which leads into Christmas, marks the beginning of the Church year. So, they correspond in this way, too. Yet my wife hears “Happy Hanukkah” around Christmas time a lot more than “Happy New Year” earlier in the fall.

Yes, there are some common themes shared by Hanukkah and the Christmas season. Since it usually occurs during Advent, our observance of Hanukkah in our home enhances my preparation for Christmas. Yet if the Jewish calendar put some other Jewish holiday, instead of Hanukkah, close to Christmas, I dare say it would be as big as we make Hanukkah to be.

Let me be clear: I am not anti-Hanukkah. It commemorates the rededication of the Temple after it had been defiled by foreign invaders. The word I transliterate here as “Hanukkah” (Jewish sources seem to prefer “Chanukah”) means “dedication.” That’s a significant event. Meditating on faith, freedom, courage, charity, integrity and knowledge is meaningful.

But Hanukkah is not Jewish Christmas. The two are not equivalent. It especially is a shame that some people, who nominally observe one or the other, act as if the two celebrations are in competition. It may be that the “and Happy Hanukkah” phenomenon detracts from the celebration of both Christmas and Hanukkah, while shortchanging Judaism’s two High Holy Days, as well as other lesser holidays and festivals. Further, it can sound a bit patronizing.

What I am advocating here is having reverence for one’s own religious observances and respect for those of others.

I’ve said before, and will likely say again, if you want to balance your “Merry Christmas” for your Jewish acquaintances, notice when Rosh Hashana occurs and wish them “Happy New Year” at that time.

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Side bar on Passover and Easter

Similar to our December experience, in the spring we have Passover and Easter occurring close together. This likely makes some non-Jewish people more aware of Passover and causes some to want to “give equal time” by tacking on “and Happy Passover.” Yet, again, Easter most closely corresponds to Yom Kippur, in that each is the most High Holy Day of the religion in which it is observed.

A difference from Hanukkah-Christmas, however, is the historic connection between Passover and Easter. During what we Christians call Holy Week, Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover. The Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples, on which the Eucharist was established, was a Passover seder. This gives the Seder, which I have celebrated each year for decades, special meaning for me.

(It’s worth noting also that in the story told in Luke 2:41-52, in which 12-year-old Jesus goes missing from his parents, who find him in the Temple, they are in Jerusalem for Passover. Thus, two Passover vignettes bookend the story of Jesus’s ministry.)

Passover celebrates the escape of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. It is a highly significant story, told extensively in the early books of the Hebrew Bible. The restoration of the Temple, celebrated at Hanukkah, is also highly significant. This story, however, is recounted in the book of Maccabees, which though included in the Catholic Bible, is not part of the Hebrew Bible (nor that of Protestants).

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Lists of Holidays

Hanukkah is but one of many opportunities to offer a Jewish friend acknowledgement of and blessings on a religious observance. Here’s a list of Jewish holidays, major and minor, and the dates on which they occur this year (2025):

Fast of Tevet 10
Sunrise to sunset, Friday, January 10.

15 Shevat
Thursday, February 13.

Purim
Sunset of Thursday, March 13 to nightfall of Friday, March 14.

Passover
Sunset of Saturday, April 12 to nightfall of Sunday, April 20.

Second Passover (Pesach Sheni)
Monday, May 12.

Lag B’Omer
Friday, May 16.

Shavuot
Sunset of Sunday, June 1 to nightfall of Tuesday, June 3.

The Three Weeks
Sunday, July 13, through Sunday, August 3.

The 15th of Av
Saturday, August 9.

Rosh Hashanah
Sunset of Monday, Sept. 22, to nightfall of Wednesday, Sept. 24.

Yom Kippur
Sunset of Wednesday, October 1, to nightfall of Thursday, October 2.

Sukkot
Sunset of Monday, October 6, to nightfall of Monday, October 13.

Shemini Atzeret & Simchat Torah
Sunset of Monday, October 13, to nightfall of Wednesday, October 15.

Chanukah
Sunset of Sunday, December 14, to nightfall of Monday, December 22.

Fast of Tevet 10
Sunrise to nightfall of Tuesday, December 30.

Christian holidays

Here’s a list of Christian holidays, observances, etc. for 2025. I ‘ve heard of most. I don’t even pretend to celebrate a good number of them and don’t really know anyone who does. Some, obviously, are tied to other holidays — e.g., all those associated with Easter, from Ash Wednesday through Easter Monday.

Jan 06, 2025, Epiphany
Jan 12, 2025, The Baptism of Jesus
Feb 02, 2025, Candlemas
Feb 14, 2025, St. Valentine’s Day
Mar 05, 2025, Ash Wednesday
Mar 17, 2025, St. Patrick’s Day
Mar 19, 2025, St. Joseph’s Day
Apr 13, 2025, Palm Sunday
Apr 17, 2025, Maundy (Holy) Thursday
Apr 18, 2025, Good Friday
Apr 20, 2025, Easter
Apr 21, 2025, Easter Monday
Apr 23, 2025, St. George’s Day
May 29, 2025, Ascension of Jesus
Jun 08, 2025, Pentecost
Jun 15, 2025, Trinity Sunday
Jun 19, 2025, Corpus Christi
Jun 29, 2025, Saints Peter and Paul
Jul 15, 2025, Saint Vladimir
Jul 25, 2025, St. James the Great Day
Aug 01, 2025, Lammas
Aug 15, 2025, The Assumption of Mary
Sep 14, 2025, Holy Cross Day
Sep 29, 2025, Michael and All Angels
Oct 31, 2025, All Hallows Eve
Nov 01, 2025, All Saints’ Day
Nov 02, 2025, All Souls’ Day
Nov 23, 2025, Christ the King
Nov 30, 2025, St. Andrew’s Day
Nov 30, 2025, Advent – first Sunday
Dec 06, 2025, St. Nicholas Day
Dec 13, St. Lucia Day
Dec 24, 2025, Christmas Eve
Dec 25, 2025, Christmas
Dec 28, 2025, Holy Innocents
Dec 31, 2025, Watch Night

A sermon I won’t get to preach

One time, long ago, I was asked to preach at my church. It was a small church at the time with co-pastors, both of whom would be gone. Being the first Sunday of the month, the service normally would’ve included communion. But it was skipped because I was not ordained.

I had led communion in small-group situations a few times in the past without any lightning bolts reigning down, but the book would be followed on this occasion.

I’ll never get to preach a communion sermon, but sometimes I think about what I might say if I did. Several experiences, some more directly associated with the celebration of communion than others, come to mind. Here’s a draft of a communion homily.

As a young minister, I was helping plan a weekend retreat, along with a senior minister and a facilitator who was a graduate student in psychology at a nearby university. Though it would be consciously unchurchy, the other minister and I suggested we conclude the weekend with a communion service. The facilitator balked at this. A few minutes later, I suggested our last activity could be sitting in a circle, listening to music and passing around a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. He thought that was a great idea.

Sometimes words aren’t needed.

Yet often we do rely on words, and they can certainly get one’s attention. Another time when the bread and wine were passed from one person to the next — this time in what was consciously a religious observance — my seatmate went off script. We were to say some simple phrase about the body/blood being symbolized as we offered the cup and loaf. Most of us repeated familiar words. My neighbor, however, said, “This is the blood of Christ, who was murdered for your sake.” That surely got beyond the usual ritual and down to the nitty gritty.

The elements are powerful symbols.

But do they have to be bread and wine? At a communion service during a student retreat when I was in college, the minister leading it used potato chips and orange juice. He explained, “Jesus used what was on the table. This is what I found on the table today. Jesus took ordinary items and touched them with significance — just as He touches you and me with significance.”

For that matter, are they merely symbols?

At one time many years ago, I was a member of the same church as the well-known theologian Harvey Cox. Harvey preached one communion Sunday. He reminded us that as Protestants, we see the bread and wine as symbols, while Catholics believe Christ to be present, the elements literally becoming His body and blood. He suggested they were right that Christ is indeed present, though not in the bread and wine themselves, but rather in the act of sharing them with one another.

One last anecdote doesn’t come from a communion service, but from what was nonetheless a communion experience.

Our community and the world were reeling from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A large auditorium on the University campus was packed for a memorial service. As I was leaving I spotted a friend through the crowd. He was one of two Black (a term a few of us were beginning to use at that time) students with whom I had lived in a house during the previous spring semester. My white guilt made me try to be invisible as I slipped away along the edge of the crowd.

He saw me and called out. It was a short hi-how’s-it-going exchange that concluded with his saying, “Well, stop by the house some time. We still have parties.”

I felt he was saying, You are welcome at the table.

If speaking from a pulpit, I would conclude with an invitation to the table, attempting to tie together themes drawn from these anecdotes. In other contexts, I would and do offer no liturgical words, as special people and I partake of whatever food is on the table and in our sharing of it are touched with significance.

Before offering the elements, I would share this story:

In 2010, my wife and I saw The Passion Play in the German town of Oberammergau, where it has been presented every 10 years for nearly 400 years. The dialogue, of course, was in German, and we were given English scripts to follow (and tiny flashlights to make this possible). I relied on the translation most of the time, though for longer soliloquies, taken from familiar Biblical passages, I just watched and listened. I knew what the character was saying without understanding the specific words. I just wanted to get the feel.

I had adjusted to the German dialogue by the time we got to the Last Supper scene. Then, as Jesus blessed the bread and wine, the words were familiar. Why did they suddenly insert English? No, wait, that’s Hebrew. The Last Supper was a Passover seder. The blessings Jesus offered were the same I’d heard at many seders over the years.

Of course, that’s what he would say. That’s what everyone says in a seder, regardless of their own language. Of course, that’s what it means when it says, “Jesus blessed the bread and the wine.” He didn’t wave his hand over the elements in some act of hocus pocus. He recited a blessing.

Then, when I said, “Jesus took the bread and blessed it,” I would pray:
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.
In like manner with the wine:
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-alom bor-ay peri ha-gafen.

The English translations could be spoken then or could be in the bulletin:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.

Then we would be ready for the further words of institution — the symbolism of the body and blood of Christ, who would be present in our sharing of the elements.