With Christmas being the main celebration and focus in the UK at the moment, other cultures and celebrations may also be coming into your child's radar via school and friends - like Diwali, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year and Hanukkah.
It can be tricky being a parent sometimes when your kids think you have all the answers. Parents who have small children learning about celebrations from different cultures at school may be looking for ways to explain Hanukkah for kids in simple terms - so that little ones can more easily understand and be involved.
To make your life easier, we've shared the story of Hanukkah below, with a few ideas on how to explain Hanukkah for kids.
When is Hanukkah 2024?
The date of Hanukkah changes each year, depending on the calendar. This year Hanukkah begins on Wednesday evening on the 25 Dec 2024 (which, incidentally is also Christmas Day), and lasts for eight days until Thursday the 2 Jan 2025.
Is Hanukkah like Christmas?
Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations have many similarities - they are both about families coming together to spend quality time, share food, exchange gifts and celebrate cultures. However, they are also very different.
Christmas is traditionally about celebrating the birth of Jesus, whereas Hanukkah celebrates a miricale that happened after the Jews won a war, meaning they could finally practice their religion freely.
What's the story of Hanukkah?
Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that's celebrated with family and friends. There's an exciting festival of lights that helps people to remember the story of Hanukkah, and it's a great time to spend with loved ones, decorating homes and sharing good food. It's also a fun time for kids who get to eat yummy foods and recieve gifts.
Over 2000 years ago, the Jews won an important battle against the Greeks. At the time, the Greeks had banned all Jewish rituals, and the King erected a statue in the Jewish temple to try and force Jewish people to bow down and pray to Greek Gods. The Jewish people refused, and a small group of Jews called the Maccabees rose up against the Greeks. After three years of war, they won - which meant that Jews could finally practice their religion freely.
To mark the occasion they repaired the Jewish temple that had been destroyed and lit an oil lamp inside. A miracle occurred when the oil lamp, that only had enough oil to burn for a single day, continued to burn for eight days straight. The Hanukkah festival is a wonderful celebration that lasts for eight days to commemorate the miracle, with light playing a leading role in the celebrations, reminding Jews of such a significant time in the history of their culture.
How do you explain Hanukkah to little kids?
This story can seem complicated and be difficult for little ones to understand, so here are some child-friendly ways to tell the story to them:
Songs and hand gestures
Preschoolers learn through music, repetition, and tactile stimulation. Songs and rhymes with physical gestures to act out different parts of the story can help young children to follow the story and feel more engaged with celebrations.
Peg dolls and role play
Making hand-painted peg dolls can be a fun activity for little ones, and the dolls can be used to act out the story of Hanukkah together through role play. The dolls can be kept and pulled out each year, and as your child gets older they'll learn to connect more and more with the story as they develop and understand it on a deeper level.
Watch the story of Hanukkah on YouTube
Watching the story of Hanukkah together as a family can be an effective way to include little ones and help them to understand more about why the occasion is being celebrated. Here is a video by Twinkl Educational Publishing on Youtube that is aimed at educating young children about Hanukkah and The Festival of Lights...
How is Hanukkah celebrated?
To celebrate Hanukkah people light candles on a branched candlestick called a menorah. There are eight candlesticks in total, with one to symbolise each of the eight days of Hanukkah, plus a ninth centre candle called the shamash, which is used to light the other candles. Staring with the first candle on say one, a new candle is lit each night.
As well as lighting the candles, gifts are exchanged and children play holiday games. There's also traditional foods like potato pancakes called latkes and treats like deep-fried jelly donuts called sufganiyot. These foods are symbolic as they are both fried to represent the long-lasting lamp oil.
What is a dreidel?
After feasting it is traditional for families to gather around and take turns spinning a top called a dreidel. The dreidel is a small four-sided spinning top with a Hebrew letter on each side, which form an acronym for a Hebrew saying that can be translated to "a great miracle happened there". Kids love this game because if the top lands the right way, they can win chocolate "gelt", or coins.
Children's activities for Hanukkah
Hanukkah is a great opportunity to teach kids about Jewish culture through fun games and activities. Here are some easy activity ideas that you can try at home with your little ones...
Colour in Hanukkah pictures
Find Hanukkah pictures online to print off for little ones to colour in. Colouring in pictures of the things that represent this Jewish celebration is a great opportunity to tell children the story of Hanukkah, while you have their full attention, as they'll be absorbed in their colouring.
You can also find fun activities to print off - like dot-to-dot drawings, colour-by-number, wordsearches for older kids and more. Twinkl is a good place to start if you're looking for good printable for Hanukkah.
Learn a Hanukkah song
Children love music and they love to sing, so why not learn a song together? There are plenty of songs and rhymes that you can sing along to on YouTube.
Make yummy Hanukkah treats
Let little ones get involved in preparing food with these recipes for Hanukkah celebrations
Learn how to play dreidel
You'll need a dreidel spinning top, an equal number of game pieces for each player (these could be pennies, chocolate coins etc. - 10-15 is enough).
To start each round, all players put one game piece into the center pot. The pot should never be empty, so if there is only one or no pieces left, every player should add one of their game pieces.
Each player takes turns to spin the dreidel, and depending on the side it lands, they must give or get game pieces from the pot.
When players have no game pieces left, they are either “out” or they can ask a fellow player for a “loan.” The winner is when one person has won everything, and that round of the game is over.
Hanukkah facts for kids
Did you know...?
• The word Hanukkah also means dedication in Hebrew
• The date of Hanukkah changes each year because it depends on the calendar
• Hanukkah always falls in November or December and it lasts for eight days
• There are lots of different ways to spell Hanukkah - this is becasue the word comes from the Hebrew alphabet which doesn’t perfectly translate to sounds in the English alphabet
• Hanukkah is not the most important Jewish holiday - religious celebrations like Passover and Rosh Hashanah are much more important
• It is a tradition to give money for Hanukkah, but nowadays people also give gifts
• Hanukkah dishes like Latkes, donuts and apple fritters are fried to symbolise the miracle of the oil that burned for eight nights
• The Menorah is a candelabra that holds nine candles. The candle in the middle is called the shamash and is used to light the other eight candles, one for each day of Hanukkah.
Proud aunt to her teen niece, Zara Mohammed is a Digital Writer for Mother&Baby. She has 10 years freelance writing experience creating lifestyle content for various platforms, including pregnancy, women’s health, parenting, child development and child mental health, plus lots of fun seasonal family articles and celebrity news.