Every December the same small-but-telling argument crops up: is it Hanukkah or Chanukah? Pundits and celebrities trade jokes while media outlets pretend this is the big cultural question of the season, but the truth is simpler — both spellings exist because English struggles to capture Hebrew sounds. Americans who actually value tradition can laugh at the fuss and get back to honoring the festival, not obsessing over which vowel a headline writer prefers.
The reason for the confusion is linguistic, not ideological: Hebrew uses letters and guttural sounds that don’t map neatly onto English, so transliterations multiplied over centuries until you had two dozen versions of the same word. Scholars and reputable reference works note that Hanukkah and Chanukah are both acceptable transliterations, with Hanukkah being the more common modern form and Chanukah reflecting an older transliteration choice. You don’t need a government memo or a woke style guide to tell you that phonetics trump performative sanctimony.
Beyond spelling, this is about a holiday that commemorates Jewish courage and the rededication of the Temple after resistance to tyranny — a story of faith, perseverance, and family that has always resonated in America. The menorah, the eight nights, and the historical memory of the Maccabees are not trivia; they are the beating heart of a people who have kept their identity through hardship. If conservative Americans truly care about religious liberty and cultural continuity, defending the dignity of these traditions matters more than policing orthography.
The marketplace of ideas has room for humor — yes, even viral clips of celebrities stumbling over pronunciation — but the larger media class delights in turning harmless cultural differences into spectacles that obscure real threats. When newsrooms fixate on what letter starts a holiday’s name, they’re diverting attention from rising antisemitism, threats to free exercise, and the broader assault on American civic normalcy. Conservatives should refuse to be distracted by manufactured controversies and instead stand squarely with communities under pressure to assimilate or be silenced.
Make no mistake: celebrating Hanukkah in America is an act of gratitude for a country where Jews can practice openly, argue over spelling, and still light their menorahs without fear. That fact should humble and unite us, not give license to smug cultural elites who weaponize language to signal virtue. Real patriots defend the right of every faith to practice its rituals and teach its children the stories that made them who they are.
So when you see another think-piece about Hanukkah versus Chanukah, remember the point: the letter on the page is incidental, the tradition is not. Conservatives ought to reclaim the narrative by treating faith and family with seriousness, by calling out media triviality, and by standing with our Jewish neighbors in both laughter and solidarity. America’s strength has always been its ability to let people of faith live and speak freely; that liberty is worth defending, even when debates turn on a single consonant.
