A brief aside, I'm never sure if I should spell it as Hannukah or Chanukah. If any readers are Jewish, please let me know if one method is preferred over another.
When's the last time it happened? Well, depending on how technical you want to get, it was either on November 29th, 1888 or on November 28th, 1918. When will it happen again? Probably not until the year 79811. No, that's not a typo. Seventy-nine thousand, eight hundred eleven.
So how does all this happen? Interesting you should ask.
Okay, first a few small details. One is that, per the Hebrew calendar, days don't go from "Midnight" to "11:59" (or 12:01 to 12:00 depending on how you look at it), they instead go from sunset of one day to sunset of the next day. This means that there's no set standard of length to any day, and it's why most holidays start the night "before."
This is why there's a little confusion over the last time Thanksgiving and Hannukah overlapped, because in 1918 at the start of Thanksgiving, it wasn't Hannukah. However, by the time everyone sat down to eat dinner and the sun was down, it was Hannukah.
Another interesting fact is that the Hebrew calendar only has 354 days in a year, whereas the Gregorian (the one you use every day) is 365 days. The Hebrew calendar is based off of the waxing and waning of the moon, not the position of the planet around the sun. This of course means that there's a conflict between the two, but the Hebrew calendar solved the problem by simply expanding on the Gregorian method of fixing time. They invented the "leap month."
Every seven out of nineteen years (the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth), they add an additional month to the calendar to help get everything back in position where it should be, getting Hannukah back into December and Passover back into Spring.
Before you get twitchy, remember that our calendar isn't exact either, and for a long time we couldn't even tell what time it was because sundials are rather useless at night and had to be adjusted during the day to compensate for seasons (as well as Daylight Savings).
So why won't we get that same overlap again for such a long time? Well, because this year is a fluke as well as a leap year. You only have Thanksgiving happening on the last week of the month in a certain number of years and Hannukah only comes into November a certain number of years, and there just isn't a time for a long time when that perfect convergence (which is affected by leap years, leap months, and everything else) comes together.
So, what will have happened by the time Thanksgiving and Hannukah overlap again? This of course assumes mankind still has both holidays and is even still alive, but here's a few things that will be over with in the meantime:
Somewhere in the 5th Millennium the Age of Aquarius will end and a new band will have to write a song called "Age of Capricorn."
In 5,125 years, the Mayan calendar ends again. Prepare for lots of doomsday prophecies.
In 36,000 years a small red dwarf star named Ross 248 will have moved closer to the Sun than Alpha Centauri, making it our closest neighbor.
In 42,000 years it will have receded, making Alpha Centauri our closest neighbor again.
In 50,000 years, a new glacial ice age will have started, and Niagara Falls will have completely receded back into Lake Erie, ceasing to exist.
Lunar tides will have slowed the Earth down enough where a "leap second" will have to be added to each day to keep everything straight.
Within 70,000 years a new Hawaiian island will have likely formed and be visible.
All this goes by, just so that people will once again be able to bust out the menurkey once again.
Happy holidays, everyone!
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