This year Hanukkah is the latest I can ever remember it being! Jewish holidays start in the evening so we will celebrate starting on December 25th with lighting our first candle. Here is my menorah tonight the first night of Hanukkah 2023. It belonged to my great-grandmother who we called Bubbe (yiddish for grandmother).
Let's start our discussion about Hanukkah with learning what the word means. Hanukkah means "dedication" in Hebrew. We are actually celebrating the RE-dedication of the synagogue in Jerusalem. An army of a pagan King had profaned the Jewish temple and forced the Jews to abandon their sacrifices and adopt pagan rituals. A group of Jewish freedom fighters, called the Maccabees rose up, defied the oppressive pagan regime, and overthrew them. The temple in Jerusalem was then re-dedicated to God and ever since then, the "Festival of Dedication" has been celebrated to commemorate this event.
Interestingly, the story of Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Old Testament since these events took place after it was written. However, it IS mentioned in the New Testament - in the Book of John! “Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade” (John 10:22-23).
So when exactly is Hanukkah? Well it always falls on the 25th day of Kislev in the Jewish calendar, but since the Jewish calendar is a lunar one, the day it is celebrated according to the Gregorian (Western) calendar varies considerably. It can be as early as late-November: some of you may remember several years ago (2013) we had "Thanksgivikkah" when the first night of Hanukkah coincided with Thanksgiving. (That won't happen again for 70,000 years - yes really, LOL.) And it can start as late as late December, like this year when we are having "Christmukkah"!
The other thing people (even Jews!) often wonder about is the several (at least 16) ways that they have seen Hanukkah spelled! I've seen it with one or two Ns, one or two Ks, with and without a final H and even starting with a C instead of an H. Orthodox Jews will often spell it with a Ch (Chanukkah) as that is more authentic to the way that the H/Ch sound is pronounced in Hebrew. However, I will be using the Hanukkah spelling here for consistency as that is the "official" spelling of Hanukkah within the US government.
One thing that DOESN'T seem to vary though is Hanukkah scrapbooking paper colors! Somewhere along the way, blue, white and yellow/gold (and sometimes silver) became the unofficially official Hanukkah colors. Probably the Israeli flag (blue and white) had something to do with that, but there really is nothing specifically traditional about those colors. I've often complained here, and irl to my scrap peeps about the lack of variety in Hanukkah papers, although it does make mixing lines and collections easy - especially when dealing with scraps!
So - your first challenge is to create a layout using only blue, white and yellow/gold. You may also use the neutral black. Here is a Hanukkah layout I created out of scraps from SEVERAL Hanukkah collections (see what I mean!) with just shades of blue, white, yellow and gold.
and here is a second layout - not Hanukkah - that I created with white and shades of blue and yellow, aka "Hanukkah colors".
Now the boring stuff for Hanukkah Day 1:
1) You must create your entry using only shades of blue, yellow and gold. The neutral colors white and black are permitted.
2) You may combine with one other monthly challenge that permits it, but you may NOT submit the same layout for 2 different Hanukkah challenges.
3) Only one submission, per person, per challenge.
4) Entries must be new single or double page layouts and may be digital or paper. Cards are permitted for this challenge.
5) Entries for HANUKKAH DAY ONE - COLOR CHALLENGE must be posted to this thread by 1/31/25 at midnight.
6) MOST IMPORTANT: I hope that you learn something and that you HAVE FUN!
Participating Cherries:
See, I remembered some things and that's a great feeling! (My stepdad was Jewish but honestly he never took the time to explain things to me, which in hindsight says a LOT about his character!) 
