2022 Family-Focused Hanukkah Planner

One of our Hanukkah family traditions is having a special family-focused theme or activity for each night of Hanukkah and we can’t coordinate it without our 2022 Family-Focused Hanukkah Planner! I update this Hanukkah Planner each year so that I can map out the holiday for my family. It always includes the dates, our theme or activity for each night, our menu for each night, and the tzedakah focus for the year.

Each of the above items are essential for my family to have a connected and family-focused holiday. The 2022 Family-Focused Hanukkah Planner is available here as a free printable. Enjoy!

And, if you’re looking for some inspiration or just curious as to how we plan to spend our Hanukkah this year, check out our themes and activities below!

Nightly Hanukkah Themes & Activities

Jewish people have many different traditions and feelings about giving gifts at Hanukkah. Our family tradition is to give eight gifts to each child. We soon learned that it did not work best for our family to do one gift per night. We then switched to do all gifts, from our own family and others, the first night of Hanukkah. This way we all had the natural joy and excitement of receiving presents, but it was not the focus or expectation of the entire holiday.

Years ago I shared our gift giving strategy in this post. For the most part it has not changed, although some of the gift themes have changed a little bit. For instance, as much as we absolutely love Peaceable Kingdom games, the older kiddos have transitioned out of most them (although they still love Fish Stix!) and so we now buy other family-friendly games that are geared towards older kids. Here’s another post with some ideas related to the gift categories we enjoy.

I mentioned that we love playing games as a family so it is always our Hanukkah tradition that the second night is Game Night. We kick it off with, what else?!, dreidel of course! Even if we play dreidel throughout the month leading up to and during Hanukkah, we always love playing as an entire family this second night of Hanukkah.

We also pull out some of our other beloved family games and try the new ones that we’ve bought that year.

And I just have to share this new game we discovered–Throw Throw Burrito! I bought it for my birthday weekend as a special treat and activity for all of us to do while we were on my birthday trip. And everyone absolutely loved it! The toddler was too young to keep up with the card part of the game, but the five year old did fine. It was silly and made us all laugh so much as we raced around and moved our bodies. If you have older kids I would highly recommend it!

This is one of my favorite annual themes since it involves us all working together in the kitchen. The idea is to make a yummy treat together, eat some of it ourselves, then pack up the rest and give it to friends, teachers, and neighbors.

For the past few years we’ve made this absolutely delicious Hanukkah Party Mix by RinOutLoud. Not only does the party mix taste good, but it makes a really pretty gift.

We are always big fans of popcorn and family move night so this is not just a special Hanukkah-only activity, but we still love doing it each year during Hanukkah. And since this year Hanukkah falls during the school’s winter break, we can do our family movie night in the middle of the week, yay!

Want to up your popcorn game? Check out these popcorn balls! They look so yummy and special! Add some blue sprinkles and you just gave them a Hanukkah twist!

Another special tradition is our book and ice cream night. We love looking through our Hanukkah Book Box and choosing our favorite Hanukkah books to read while snuggled on the couch. We receive so many wonderful ones from PJ Library (see a reel of our Hanukkah collection on our Instagram grid). If you haven’t signed up to receive free Jewish books from this program, it’s the perfect time to do so–such a special Hanukkah, and all year round!, gift to yourself and family!

Before the pandemic we would go out to our favorite ice cream shop for this theme. During the first pandemic Hanukkah we made yummy sundaes in our house. Either way works and is a special treat! If you choose to make your own, you can always add special Hanukkah touches–blue whipped cream, chocolate gelt, blue sprinkles and other candy. Have fun!

Every Hanukkah we love having a craft night! This year I added cuddles too because why not? Cuddling with my kids is the absolute best!

If you’re looking for Hanukkah-themed crafts, check out the ones we’ve done in the past below. We also have more on Instagram (check the Hanukkah highlights) that have yet to be made into a post for the website. This year’s are still in the works!

Our Christmas Eve tradition is to eat Chinese takeout. This year the seventh night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve so I decided to combine our Chinese takeout tradition with another favorite Hanukkah activity–home movie viewing! I started the home movie viewing during the pandemic and it is such a simple way to remember all the joy of the previous year.

I grab all the videos (ok, I weed out any randoms the kids took of the floor!) from the previous year and plop them into iMovie. I add transitions and that’s it–we have our calendar year home movie! We then cuddle on the couch and watch how we spent the previous year. I love these reminders of the happy moments we had together. And this year we will laugh, reminisce and eat spring rolls while doing so!

Don’t worry, we will also have latkes that night! The last time Christmas Eve overlapped with Hanukkah I tried these Chinese Latkes with Tangy Dipping Sauce and we all fell in love with them. Yum!

Every Hanukkah we love getting out in nature–usually with a special Hanukkah hike. But this year the last day of Hanukkah not only falls on a weekend, but it is also Christmas. And our tradition is to go to the beach on Christmas day since we don’t celebrate the holiday and we love having the beach mostly to ourselves. So this year instead of a Hanukkah Hike, we will have Hanukkah at the Beach!

Menu Inspiration

Can you see in the photo near the top some of the yummies we plan to make for Hanukkah? Some are tried and true (been making the Co-op latkes since we took the cooking class in 2006!) and some we are trying for the first time (malpua sounds so delicious!). Here are links to some of the recipes we will use this Hanukkah:

Chinese Latkes with Tangy Dipping Sauce (made these last time Hanukkah overlapped with Christmas Eve–they are great!)
Goat Cheese and Zucchini Blintzes (this is a new one but looks so tasty!)
Indian-Inspired Latkes (these are some of our FAVORITES that we make each year!)
Malpua (can’t wait to try these!)

Do you have favorite recipes we should try this year? Please let me know!

However you celebrate, may you all have a beautiful Hanukkah filled with light and love! Chag Hanukkah Sameach!