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The biggest menorah in the world was built and lit in New York City at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street for Hanukkah in 2017. The menorah stood 36 feet tall and weighed a whopping 4,000 pounds.

Have you ever wondered why Hanukkah has more than one accepted spelling in English? Since the English language has no direct equivalent to the letter "chet," with which the word Hanukkah begins in Hebrew, it's commonly spelled both Hanukkah and Chanukah in English to reflect the Hebrew letter's pronunciation.

According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, for many years, upper class Germans rejected the potato pancake, as potatoes were considered a lower class food. It wasn't until the 1840s that the tradition of potato latkes caught on—and only following a crop failure that lessened the availability of grain and made potatoes a more common food throughout Europe

According to Chabad, the pancakes originally served during Hanukkah weren't made out potatoes—they were made out of cheese. The cheese once used in latkes was supposed to recall how Judith saved the Jews from Assyrian general Holofernes by first enticing him with a meal containing dairy and ultimately beheading him.

The same goes for potato pancakes, or latkes, which are traditionally eaten during the holiday. "These are foods that are particularly saturated with oil, so they help us recall the miracle," explains Mason

Ever wondered why jelly donuts, or sufganiyot, are traditionally served at Hanukkah? Mason explains that fried foods, like donuts, recall the original Hanukkah miracle of the oil burning for eight days.

Some Jewish holidays, like Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, can only fall on certain days of the week to avoid coinciding with the sabbath, Shabbat. However, Hanukkah has fewer limitations, and can begin on any day of the week except for Tuesday, according to Chabad. That's due to the fact that the month before Kislev, Cheshvan, can have either 29 or 30 days.

While you'll find Christmas and other religious holidays on fixed dates on the Gregorian calendar, Hanukkah moves around from year to year. That's because the holiday begins on the 25th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar—which doesn't completely line up with the Gregorian one—thus accounting for the holiday jumping from date to date in the fall and winter.

While gifts are frequently exchanged on Hanukkah, Rabbi Dave Mason, author of The Age of Prophecy, says that doing so is actually a relatively modern practice.

Christmas isn't the only winter holiday astronauts have brought with them to space. In 1993, while aboard the space shuttle Endeavor, astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman brought a menorah (the Hanukkah candle holder) and a dreidel (the holiday's top), which he played on a televised broadcast in celebration of Hanukkah. Hoffman—NASA's first Jewish-American astronaut—also made history in 1985 when he brought a Torah (the Jewish holy book) into space for the first time.

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