By Debbie Kelley | The Gazette
The glow from Christmas tree bulbs will shine with the brightness of menorah candles on Wednesday.
For the first time in 19 years, two important religious holidays coincide on Dec. 25: Christmas, which always falls on that day to mark the birth of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and the sundown start of Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, in which light overcomes darkness with the rededication of Jerusalem’s liberated temple in the second century.
The holidays don’t often align like stars in the sky; the last time Hanukkah began on Christmas was in 2005. To most Jews, there’s no significance to the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars intersecting, according to Jeff Ader, president of Temple Beit Torah, a reform synagogue in Colorado Springs.