Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I hope anyone reading this already has their grocery shopping done and your travel plans are not affected by the bad weather on the East Coast. Between shopping and traveling for a Thanksgiving meal you might have heard a new word going around the internet, Thanksgivukkah! What the heck is Thanksgivukkah?
Basically you combine the words Thanksgiving + Chanukah. (Or one of these spellings many spellings for the Jewish holiday Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanukkah, Channukah, Hanukah, Hannukah, Hanukkah depending on who you ask.) The reason for this is that tomorrow on Thanksgiving it will be the second night of Chanukah, a Jewish holiday. This won't happen for another 70,000+ years making it a once-in-a-lifetime event for everyone reading this. You can tell your grandkids about your amazing Thanksgivukkah experience. (I doubt they will care though.)
I guess since Chrismukkah wasn't cutting it we just needed to throw in a new word this time of year. Not sure what the obsession is with coining new words, phrases, and terms for the holidays but I guess if it makes people happy I guess I hope people have a Happy Thanksgivukkah tomorrow. Of course celebrities always seems to get their names mixed together a lot more. Anyone remember when Brangelina and Bennifer were big terms?
The reason I thought I'd write about this is that as a blogger and writer I always find it interesting to see what new words people coin. Also from an SEO (search engine optimization) perspective it's interesting. The term “Thanksgivukkah” according to this Google Trends screenshot I took is getting a huge amount of search volume currently. It's a breakout terms and it spiked out of nowhere in October and has been on the rise ever since then up until now.
The other thing I find fascinating is that most of the searches seem to be coming from New York City. Also it looks like the rest of the English speaking world is not searching for the term. Google Trend shows that the United States is the only country searching for the terms which makes sense since we are the only country that celebrates Thanksgiving. (I believe there is a Canadian Thanksgiving which celebrates something different.)
What do you think of these Google Trends screenshots for Thanksgivukkah and why do you think terms get so many searches so quickly? Because of a news articles, blogs, social media? All of them? I'd be interested to hear my readers thoughts.
Whatever faith your are I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy Thanksgivukkah.