By Sara Noah
For the first time in nearly two decades, the first candle of the Hanukkah menorah and the star atop the Christmas tree were lit on the same evening. On 25 December 2024, the Jewish festival of Chanukah and the Catholic Nativity collided on the calendar – a rare alignment that last occurred in 2005 and will not repeat until 2035. In Britain, where Jewish and Christian communities have coexisted for centuries, the convergence was more than a calendrical curiosity. It became a lens through which questions of identity, belonging, and resilience were refracted with unusual clarity.
The coincidence arrived at a moment of acute tension. Antisemitic incidents across the UK remained at historically elevated levels, driven by the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents in 2024 – the second-highest annual total ever reported, and 56% above the previous peak. Monthly averages had nearly doubled, from 154 incidents per month in the year before 7 October to 294 per month in 2024. Against this backdrop, the Festival of Lights carried a weight it does not always bear.
A Calendrical Rarity
The dates of Hanukkah are fixed by the Hebrew calendar, a lunisolar system that places the festival on 25 Kislev each year. Because the Jewish year is shorter than the Gregorian one by roughly eleven days, the holiday drifts across December and occasionally November. According to the Jewish calendar authority Hebcal, Chanukah 2024 began at nightfall on Wednesday 25 December and concluded on Thursday 2 January 2025.
The overlap is not merely symbolic. For interfaith families – a growing demographic in modern Britain – it posed practical questions about how to honour both traditions on the same day. Rebecca Wilson, an author and artist raised in Gwynedd with a Jewish mother and Christian father, told the BBC: “That’s what’s gonna happen this year. We’ll eat a Christmas turkey and then we’ll light Hanukkah candles.”
Edmund Case, president of the interfaith resource organisation Interfaithfamily.com, has documented the “December Dilemma” for over two decades. His research found that the first night of Hanukkah has fallen on Christmas Day only four times in the past century. “When Hanukkah doesn’t fall close to Christmas, they become more of a separate holiday for each partner,” Case noted during the 2005 overlap.
The Menorah in Trafalgar Square
In London, the Jewish Leadership Council staged its annual Chanukiah lighting in Trafalgar Square, running from 25 December 2024 to 2 January 2025. The giant menorah – co-sponsored by the Mayor of London – has stood in the square since 2007, positioned alongside the Norway spruce that serves as London’s official Christmas tree. The image of the two symbols side by side became, in the JLC’s framing, “a symbol of London’s religious diversity.”
But the JLC’s messaging went beyond celebration. The organisation urged British Jews to participate in its #LightWithPride campaign, encouraging families to photograph their lit menorahs and share them on social media. “This powerful symbol of Jewish pride is our response to increased antisemitism in the UK,” the JLC stated. Claudia Mendoza, the JLC’s chief executive, wrote that British Jews had increasingly felt compelled to “remove mezuzahs, conceal their Magen Davids, alter their surnames online, and refrain from wearing kippot in public.”
In Islington, Chabad Lubavitch organised its 14th annual Menorah Lighting on Islington Green on 26 December, drawing over 500 participants. The event featured music from the techno-klezmer band GhettoPlotz, greetings from the Mayor of Islington, Councillor Anjna Khurana, and the local MP Emily Thornberry. Yet the celebration was shadowed by protest: three pro-Palestinian activists demonstrated within metres of the event, prompting a formal complaint to the Metropolitan Police. Rabbi Eliezer Tunk of Chabad Lubavitch Bricket Wood described being “shocked and deeply upset” after a separate menorah in Hertfordshire was vandalised with blue paint and had its branches torn down on 28 December – an incident Hertfordshire Police are treating as a hate crime.
Chanukah’s Growing Reach
A study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research revealed that Chanukah had become Britain’s most widely observed Jewish festival. The JPR’s Jews in Uncertain Times survey, drawing responses from more than 4,800 adults, found that 89% of British Jews lit Chanukah candles at least once in 2024 – a higher rate than Passover seder attendance (84%) or Rosh Hashanah observance (74%). The reach extended well beyond regular synagogue-goers: 68% of non-practising Jews reported lighting candles.
JPR executive director Dr Jonathan Boyd attributed the festival’s appeal to its parallels with Christmas – “time of year, gift-giving, familial feeling” – as well as its “ritual simplicity and popular foods.” The JPR noted that Chanukah’s timing and its family-focused atmosphere helped explain its broad appeal “particularly at a moment when many Jews say they are looking for sources of comfort, identity and togetherness.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews launched a parallel initiative called “Be Their Light,” urging families to light an extra candle each night in support of hostages still held captive by Hamas. Board of Deputies president Phil Rosenberg said: “It is unbearable to contemplate that these hostages, captured in such traumatic circumstances, are still held in Gaza. At this time of darkness, we must all shine some light on their plight and pray for their release.”
The Catholic Season: Pilgrims of Hope
For Britain’s Catholic community, Christmas 2024 carried its own particular significance. The season marked the opening of the Jubilee Year 2025, a Holy Year inaugurated by Pope Francis on Christmas Eve with the opening of the Holy Door at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The Jubilee theme – “Pilgrims of Hope” – echoed through Christmas messages from Catholic leaders across England and Wales.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, President of the Bishops’ Conference, delivered his Christmas message by reciting verses from an Advent hymn dating to 1854. In his Midnight Mass homily at Westminster Cathedral, the Cardinal connected the Nativity to the Jubilee’s theme. “It is so fitting, then, that Hope is the theme of the Holy Year of 2025,” he said. “In this coming year, we are to see ourselves as Pilgrims of Hope, striving to deepen hope and bring it into the world.”
Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark framed the season as a call to active hope rather than passive optimism. “In times of darkness, in times of pain, in times of division, instead of giving into the temptation of losing hope we must turn to our one, great living hope – the Lord Jesus,” he said. Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham called Christmas “like a pilgrimage – with many of us travelling – and this year, as Catholics, we are preparing for Christmas at the very beginning of the Jubilee Year 2025.”
The Catholic liturgical calendar placed the Nativity of the Lord on 25 December, followed by the Feast of St Stephen on 26 December, St John the Evangelist on 27 December, and the Holy Innocents on 28 December – days on which, by remarkable coincidence, the first nights of Hanukkah were also being observed. The octave of Christmas, running through 1 January, overlapped almost entirely with the eight nights of Chanukah.
Shared Light, Distinct Meaning
The convergence invited reflection on what the two festivals share – and where they diverge. Both traditions centre on light as a symbol of divine presence and human resilience. The Hanukkah story recounts the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabees’ victory over the Seleucid Empire, and the miracle of a single day’s oil burning for eight. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, whom Christians regard as the light of the world.
Norma Glass, a member of the Jewish community in Swansea, captured the spirit of the overlap: “This year magically it’s arriving on Christmas Day so it’s lovely that both Christians and Jews are able to celebrate together miracles that have happened in their respective histories.”
Yet the festivals differ profoundly in theological weight. Christmas is the most important date in the Christian liturgical year. Hanukkah, by contrast, is a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish calendar – elevated in cultural significance largely through its proximity to Christmas and the resonance of its domestic rituals. This asymmetry can create friction for interfaith families navigating the so-called “December Dilemma.”
What the Overlap Reveals
The 2024 convergence did not create Britain’s multicultural reality, but it threw it into sharper relief. Public celebrations in Trafalgar Square, Islington, and communities across Wales demonstrated the country’s capacity for inclusive festivity. At the same time, the vandalism of menorahs, the protests at public lightings, and the sustained surge in antisemitic incidents documented by the CST – including 19 incidents of damage to public chanukiahs in 2024 alone – revealed the fragility of that inclusivity.
For interfaith families, the double celebration demanded what it always has: negotiation, creativity, and a willingness to hold two traditions in tension without collapsing one into the other. For the broader British public, the overlap offered a rare moment of simultaneous visibility – the menorah beside the Christmas tree, the latke alongside the mince pie – that made the country’s religious diversity tangible rather than abstract.
As Cardinal Nichols said in his Midnight Mass homily: “In the days to come, I invite you to visit the crib, to see in it the brightness of eternity touching our world.” Across Britain this December, many did exactly that – and then lit a candle of their own.
