Hanukkah is the only holiday you decorate for eight evenings in a row. Here is what goes up once and stays, what changes nightly, why the answer is always 44 candles, and what the whole thing costs at our Thornhill shelf prices.
Night eight, all nine burning. The one decoration that faces the street rather than the room.
Hanukkah decorations have a problem no other holiday hands you: the party runs for eight nights, and almost everyone buys for one. The house goes up on the first evening, peaks at about night three, and by night six the kids have stopped noticing and the garland is just furniture. Fix that by splitting the buy in two. There is a standing set that goes up once and does not move, and there is one small thing per night, and the second half is the one people skip.
That split is not something I invented at the counter. It is how the holiday itself is built. The lights ascend, one added each evening, and the reason is recorded in the Talmud in Shabbat 21b, where the school of Hillel argues for increasing the count rather than decreasing it, "because one elevates to a higher level in matters of sanctity and one does not downgrade." Decorate the same way and the eighth night is the best one instead of the tiredest.
I style this holiday for families across Thornhill, Vaughan and Richmond Hill every December, and everything priced below is on our shelves at 7724 Yonge Street right now.
Key Takeaways
- Hanukkah 2026 runs from sundown on Friday December 4 to nightfall on Saturday December 12, and both the first and eighth nights land on a Friday.
- One menorah burns 44 candles across the eight nights: 36 nightly lights plus eight shamash candles. Every Hanukkah candle box we stock holds 45.
- The last three nights burn 24 of those 44, so more than half the box goes in the final stretch. Checking the box on night four is what leaves people short.
- The standing set, seven pieces covering window, door, wall and mantel, is $79.93. Spread across eight nights that is $9.99 a night, the same as one box of candles.
- The nightly add is eight small items totalling $43.92, an average of $5.49 each. Buy them in ascending value so the week climbs.
- A fully decorated eight night Hanukkah at $133.84 costs less than one 20 guest kids birthday party, which runs $160.80 in our event decorations guide.
When Is Hanukkah in 2026?
Sundown on Friday December 4 through nightfall on Saturday December 12. The first candle is lit on the evening of Friday December 4 and the eighth on the evening of Friday December 11. You can check the civil dates against the Hebcal calendar for Chanukah 2026.
The detail worth planning around is that both bookend nights are Fridays. Night one and night eight are the two evenings families actually gather, and in 2026 both of them collide with Shabbat dinner. That has two practical consequences.
The first is timing. On a Friday the Hanukkah candles go in before the Shabbat candles and before sundown, not at the relaxed hour you would light on a Tuesday. Whatever is going up on your table has to be up early, with the cooking still running.
The second is the table itself. On those two Fridays you are not setting a Hanukkah table and a Shabbat table, you are setting one table that has to do both jobs. That is the argument for a runner rather than a full themed cover on those nights: it carries the holiday without turning a Shabbat dinner into a children's party. Our Star of David runner at $24.99 works for exactly this, and the longer menorah runner at $39.99 covers a 108 inch table.
Night two, Saturday December 5, has its own quirk. Shabbat has to end before you can light, so that night runs late. Do not plan the big family dinner for night two.
What Goes Up Once: The Standing Set
The standing set is everything that goes up before the first candle and comes down on December 13 without being touched in between. Seven pieces cover it and the whole thing is $79.93.
Start at the window and work inward, because the window is not a decorating preference here. The same Talmudic passage that gives us the ascending count also puts the menorah "at the entrance to one's house on the outside, so that all can see it," and for anyone living above ground level, "at the window adjacent to the public domain." The point of the lights is that they are seen from the street. That makes the window the anchor of the whole scheme, which is the opposite of how you would plan a birthday or a shower, where everything faces inward at a focal wall.
So: window decorations at $7.99 for a set of 25 clings, then a door cover banner at $21.99 for the entrance, then the room. Blue and silver wood bead garland is $9.99 for 36 inches, a Happy Hanukkah wooden wall plaque is $14.99, a Star of David tinsel wreath is $17.99, a small wall sign is $2.99, and a $3.99 pack of gold and white Star of David confetti finishes the mantel.
One honest note on menorahs. We are a party store, not a Judaica shop, and our menorah range is shallow: a large traditional silverstone at $33.99, a tin holder at $4.99 and a mini modern metal one at $14.99, in single digit quantities. Almost every family we serve already owns theirs, often a grandparent's. If yours is the exception, buy the menorah somewhere that specialises and let us handle the eight nights around it.
The standing set doing its job on night five, with nobody having touched it since night one.
How Do You Light the Hanukkah Candles?
Candles go into the menorah from right to left, and they are lit from left to right. Put differently, you add each new night's candle to the left of the previous one, then light the newest first and work back toward the right. The raised candle in the centre is the shamash, the helper. It is lit first, it does the lighting, and it does not count toward the night's number.
That last part is why the shamash exists at all. The Hanukkah lights are for looking at rather than for using, so a separate working flame is kindled alongside them. It is a small distinction that explains a lot about how the menorah is shaped and why every box of candles has to cover nine positions rather than eight.
For anyone hosting who did not grow up with this, the practical version is short. Set the menorah in the window before sundown. Fill it right to left. Light the shamash, then the newest candle, then back along the row. On the two Fridays, do all of it before you light Shabbat candles.
How Many Candles Do You Need for Hanukkah?
Forty four, for one menorah, for the full eight nights. The arithmetic is fixed and it never changes from year to year: 1 candle on the first night rising to 8 on the last is 36, plus one shamash every night is another 8. Every Hanukkah candle box on our shelf holds 45, which is the manufacturers telling you the same thing, with one spare for the candle that snaps.
The part that catches people out is not the total. It is the shape of the burn.
Fixed holiday arithmetic: 36 nightly lights plus 8 shamash candles. Percentages are of a 45 count box, the size of every Hanukkah candle box stocked at Party Boutiques, Thornhill.
44 candles of a 45 count box, with one spare
| Night | Date | Candles burned that night | Running total | Share of the box used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Night 1 | Fri Dec 4 | 2 | 2 | 4% |
| Night 2 | Sat Dec 5 | 3 | 5 | 11% |
| Night 3 | Sun Dec 6 | 4 | 9 | 20% |
| Night 4 | Mon Dec 7 | 5 | 14 | 31% |
| Night 5 | Tue Dec 8 | 6 | 20 | 44% |
| Night 6 | Wed Dec 9 | 7 | 27 | 60% |
| Night 7 | Thu Dec 10 | 8 | 35 | 78% |
| Night 8 | Fri Dec 11 | 9 | 44 | 98% |
| Total | 44 | 44 | 98% |
Read the running totals and the trap is obvious. You are halfway through Hanukkah after night four with only 14 candles gone, under a third of the box. Then nights six, seven and eight take 24 between them, more than half the box in three evenings. Anyone who glances at a box that still looks two thirds full on night four and decides they are fine is short by night seven.
Two rules follow. If more than one person in the house lights their own menorah, buy one box per menorah, because two menorahs need 88 candles and there is no such thing as a half box. And buy them in November. The candle is the cheapest thing in this article, about 22 cents each in a $9.99 box, and it is the only item where running out cannot be worked around at 6pm on a Thursday.
| Nights 1 to 4 | Nights 5 to 8 | Full eight nights | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Candles burned | 14 | 30 | 44 |
| Share of a 45 count box | 31% | 67% | 98% |
| Left in the box afterwards | 31 | 1 | 1 |
What Changes Nightly: Eight Small Things
The nightly add is one small item per evening, ascending in value the way the lights ascend. Eight of them from our shelves comes to $43.92, an average of $5.49 a night, and it is the half of the budget that decides whether night seven feels like anything.
Sequencing them by price is not a gimmick. It gives the week a direction, it stops night eight being an anticlimax, and it means the expensive items land on the nights when attention has started to drift. Here is a full eight night run, all in stock:
| Night | What to add | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Happy Hanukkah pen | $2.99 |
| 2 | Wooden dreidel, blue | $3.99 |
| 3 | Star of David squishy | $3.99 |
| 4 | Menorah and stars wall decals | $3.99 |
| 5 | Happy Hanukkah bag clip | $4.99 |
| 6 | Colouring and activity set with pencils | $7.99 |
| 7 | Mosaic foam craft kit | $7.99 |
| 8 | 52 card Chanukah playing card deck | $7.99 |
| Eight nights | $43.92 |
Swap freely. A dreidel piñata is $24.99 if you want one big night, a DIY snow globe kit is $8.99, a water magic book is $14.99 and holographic kosher chocolate coins are $2.49. What matters is that eight things exist and that they are not all handed over on the first evening.
Gift bags are the cheap trick here. Plain Hanukkah gift bags are $1.99 and a jumbo one is $2.99, so eight bags cost about sixteen dollars and turn a $5 item into an event. That is the same principle as the before and after swaps in our guide to affordable party decorations: the packaging is doing more work than the contents.
What Do Hanukkah Decorations Cost in Canada?
Between $25 and $322 depending on how much of the house you are doing and whether you are hosting. Three real tiers, every figure a current shelf price in Thornhill, whole packs as you would actually buy them:
Party Boutiques shelf prices, Thornhill ON, August 2026. Whole packs, no helium, no labour. Menorah not included, since most households already own one.
| Setup | Standing set | Candles | Nightly adds | Table for 8 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Window only, one candle box | $14.97 | $9.99 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $24.96 |
| The full family eight nights | $79.93 | $9.99 | $43.92 | $0.00 | $133.84 |
| Hosting, with a seated table for 8 | $186.88 | $9.99 | $43.92 | $80.92 | $321.71 |
| Tier | Standing set | Candles | Nightly adds | Table for 8 | Total | Per night |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Window only | $14.97 | $9.99 | $24.96 | $3.12 | ||
| Full family | $79.93 | $9.99 | $43.92 | $133.84 | $16.73 | |
| Hosting | $186.88 | $9.99 | $43.92 | $80.92 | $321.71 | $40.21 |
The middle tier is the one to look at. A fully decorated house with something new every evening is $133.84, which works out to $16.73 a night. The 20 guest kids birthday priced in our event decorations guide is $160.80 for a single afternoon. Eight nights of Hanukkah costs less than one birthday party, and the reason is structural: decorations scale with surfaces and with occasions, and Hanukkah reuses the same surfaces eight times.
There is a neat coincidence in the middle tier worth pointing out. The $79.93 standing set divided across eight nights is $9.99 a night, which is exactly what a box of candles costs. The whole decorated house runs at the price of the candles burning in it.
The top tier adds five more pieces to the standing set: the $39.99 menorah table runner, a $12.99 Star of David ribbon roll, a $17.99 ceramic decoration and two $17.99 acrylic plaques, which is what takes it from $79.93 to $186.88. It only makes sense if you are seating people, and in 2026 that means the two Fridays. A table for eight is $80.92: a $9.99 Festival of Lights table cover, a $24.99 Star of David runner, $7.99 gold napkins, two packs of gold acrylic napkin rings at $7.99, two packs of Chanukah straws at $6.99, and a $7.99 Star of David ice cube tray.
How Do You Decorate for Hanukkah and Christmas in the Same House?
Give each one its own surface and keep the palettes apart. In a lot of GTA households this is a live question rather than a hypothetical, and the version that works is spatial rather than blended: the menorah owns the window, the tree owns its corner, and neither one gets decorated in the other's colours.
The palette does most of the work. Hanukkah runs blue, white and silver, or blue, white and gold if your room is warm. Christmas runs red and green. Those two schemes do not fight if they are eight feet apart and they look confused if they are mixed on one mantel. Pick one metallic for the Hanukkah side, silver for a cooler modern room or gold for candlelight, and do not use both.
We also carry a Chrismukkah banner kit at $14.99 for households that would rather make the joke than manage the border, and it sells every year. The timing helps too: in 2026 Hanukkah finishes on December 12, so the two barely overlap and you can hand the room over rather than share it.
Tips From Our Thornhill Counter
Buy candles in November and buy a spare box. Everything else in this guide can be improvised on the day. Candles cannot, and the week before the holiday clears our shelf of the plain blue and white boxes first, leaving the $24.99 metallics.
Do not buy a themed table cover for all eight nights. You need it twice at most. A runner reads as holiday rather than as party and can sit under a normal dinner without comment, which is what most of the eight evenings actually are.
Buy confetti once and use half of it. A single $3.99 pack of gold and white Star of David confetti covers a mantel and a table centre. We hold 436 packs of it, so this is not scarcity talking. Two packs simply looks like a bar mitzvah, and if that is what you are planning, that is a different setup with a different budget.
Count the children before the adults. The eight night structure is entirely about them. Adults are content with a lit menorah and a good dinner, which is closer to the atmosphere in our Rosh Hashanah table guide. Children are the ones keeping score across the week, and $43.92 spread over eight evenings buys more goodwill than $150 of decor on night one.
Skip the balloon wall. I say this as someone who works in a shop full of balloons. Hanukkah is candlelight for eight nights running, and a foil balloon that is a novelty on Friday is a deflating nuisance by Wednesday. Save the balloon arch for a birthday, where it has one afternoon to be brilliant in.
Holiday Stock, Before The Holiday
One email a month on what has just landed in Thornhill and what to buy early. Hanukkah candles are the December one.
Where to Buy Hanukkah Decorations in the GTA
Our store is on Yonge Street in Thornhill, in a neighbourhood with a long established Jewish community, which is why we carry just over a hundred Hanukkah lines as standing range rather than ordering a seasonal shelf in each November. It splits into decorations, tableware and loot bags, and the wider judaica section carries Purim, Passover and Rosh Hashanah alongside it.
Online checkout is switched off across our site at the moment, so this is a phone call or a visit rather than a delivery. Call (365) 556-0536 and we will put the order together at the counter for you to collect. We are ten to twenty minutes up or down Yonge from most of the surrounding area, and our install team works across Thornhill, Vaughan and Richmond Hill.
December is the busiest month on Yonge Street, and it is worth knowing what the city is doing around you. The Toronto festivals and events listings carry the public menorah lightings, which are usually the first night and draw a crowd. If you want the background rather than the shopping list, My Jewish Learning's Hanukkah primer covers the history and the customs properly.
The nightly add, lined up on the mantel before the first candle is lit.
Shop at Party Boutiques
We are an independent party supply store on Yonge Street in Thornhill carrying over 5,000 products, and our team has designed more than 200 events across the GTA. If this is your first year running the eight nights, come in and tell us how many people light and how many children are counting. That conversation takes five minutes and it is the difference between a house that peaks on night three and one that peaks on night eight. You can read more about who we are or get in touch before you visit, and the rest of our seasonal writing lives in the cultural celebrations section.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hanukkah 2026 begins at sundown on Friday December 4 and the eighth day ends at nightfall on Saturday December 12. The first candle is lit on the evening of December 4 and the eighth on the evening of Friday December 11. Both the opening night and the final night fall on a Friday this year, which is unusual and worth planning around.
Forty four for one menorah across the full eight nights. That is 36 for the nightly lights, one on the first night rising to eight on the last, plus one shamash every night for another eight. Boxes are sized around that number, and every Hanukkah candle box we carry in Thornhill holds 45, which covers the eight nights with one spare.
Candles are placed in the menorah from right to left, so the newest candle each night sits furthest left of those placed. They are then lit in the opposite order, newest first, using the shamash, the raised helper candle in the centre. The shamash is lit first and used to light the others, and it is never used for the count.
Start at the window, because the menorah is traditionally placed where it can be seen from the street. Build outward from there with a door banner, a garland and a wall piece that stay up for the whole eight nights, then add one small thing per night rather than putting everything out on night one. Blue, white, silver and gold is the standard palette.
Blue and white are the base, taken from the colours associated with Jewish tradition and the Israeli flag, with silver and gold as the metallic accents. Silver reads cooler and more modern, gold reads warmer against candlelight. Most GTA households we serve pick one metallic and stay with it rather than mixing both.
The menorah is the only required item and most families already own theirs. Beyond that the common pieces are window decorations, a door cover banner, blue and silver garland, hanging paper ornaments in Star of David and dreidel shapes, a table runner, Star of David confetti and wall plaques. Dreidels and chocolate coins cover the games and the loot bag side.
Party Boutiques carries just over a hundred Hanukkah lines at 7724 Yonge St in Thornhill, split across decorations, tableware and loot bags. Online checkout is currently switched off across our site, so orders are placed by phone on (365) 556-0536 or at the counter, and we are ten to twenty minutes from most of Vaughan, Richmond Hill and North York.