How to Celebrate Sukkot (and why you should)

Great Plains Sukkah  Golden Grasses

The Sukkut festival is the happiest of the Jewish festivals. If your family is drawn to understanding Jesus, in the context of His Jewish roots, I would encourage you to think about celebrating this joyous holiday.

Sukkot is the Hebrew word for “booths,” the singular being “sukkah”. It is known as the Feast of Tabernacles, “Z’man Simchatein” or the “Season of our Rejoicing.” It is also know as the Festival of the In-gathering or “Chag ha-Asif” and will occur on the 15th day of the month of Tishri (late September to late October), that is, 5 days after Yom Kippur, falling this year on October 13.

Sukkut is a celebration of God’s provision as well as release from desert wanderings. The holiday is also associated with another great event, which is the consecration of the Temple of Jerusalem during the reign of King Solomon, which took place during Sukkot.  This historic event is mentioned in Kings Chronicles’ I and II. As you can see, Sukkot is rich with meaning and is one of the three major Jewish holidays, which consists of three pilgrim festivals, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, known collectively as the Shalosh Regalim. The holiday lasts for 7 days and combines elements of Thanksgiving, Homecoming and Christmas, with the fun of a family camp-out thrown in.

The Feast of Tabernacles/Sukkot is important to us as Christians because it points to the future day when the Messiah sets up the Messianic Kingdom and tabernacles (dwells) with us. Joy, indeed!

How to Celebrate Sukkot

1)   Build a sukkah. This can be a porch, a tent, or a temporary shelter, constructed from tent poles or inexpensive wood. The sukkah symbolizes the temporary shelters that were used during the desert wanderings. The Sukkah is a place where the devout eat and sleep during the seven days of the festival. The first day is celebrated with special prayer services and holiday meals. Inside these temporary quarters, all the members of the family have the Sukkot meal together. The Sukkah is dismantled on the last day of the festival symbolizing the homecoming the Jewish people experienced as they entered the Promised Land. People usually decorate their sukkah with flowers, fruit, paper chains, banners, and pictures of Jerusalem. It is very common to invite friends to eat with your family in the sukkah in the tradition of Abraham, who always invited strangers in to eat with him. The top of the sukkah is open, to see the stars of heaven.

There are many designs and ideas on-line, including youtube videos, explaining building a succah out of PVC pipe. Use a porch, a tent, or simply make a graham cracker, pretzel and frosting sukkah, to symbolize a temporary dwelling. Here is an idea to get you started.

2)   Create a paper mache etrog. Here is a great tutorial. Or knit one; raverly has a pattern here. 

4 species of plants are used during the celebration: the etrog (a fruit similar to a lemon), and the branches of myrtle, palm and willow. These are tied together to make a lulav. Each day of the festival, people shake the four species to symbolize the various people in our community; from the spiritually strong to the spiritually weak. Just as all 4 species are held together, the community must come together and be united with the strong and the weak working together (Ecc 4:9). People wave the lulav and point the etrog in all four directions of the compass as well as up and down, three times each day, representing God’s total presence and dominion over the entire universe.

3)   Hang banners on your sukkah or the walls of your home. We are going to create some simple banners using pillow cases and table cloths. A traditional saying would be “Baruch ha-ba” “Blessed be the one who comes.” Other banners might say “ivdu et Hasem b’Simcha (serve G-d with joy) or “sarua I’tzadik vlvishrei leiv smcha” (light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart). You can do a language translation on-line to see how to write these saying in Hebrew if you’d like. This site has some great ideas and printables to get you started.

4)   Create a harvest centerpiece using fall gourds, pumpkins, etc. Decorate your table in fall colors. We are going to make simple chair decorations by tie-dying a white sheet, tearing it carefully into strips and then tying the strips to the back of the chairs. This site has some stunning ideas.

5)  Decorate the sides of your sukkah or dining room; make paper chains in fall colors, perler shapes to hang, and a fall wreath to add to our decorations.

6) Say special Sukkot prayers. Here are some lovely ones to get your started (scroll down the page to get to the prayers).

7)  Invite friends and family over to eat delicious food, including Challah bread without which no Biblical celebration is complete! (a quick google search will come up with scores of recipes).

It’s the season to celebrate God’s provision, our permanent home in Heaven and the hope that He will tabernacle among us one day soon! May the joy and peace of the Lord be with you this fall! Shalom!

I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas and decorations for Sukkot! Leave a comment, and link your blog!

Lisa is a disciple of Christ, beloved wife and homeschooling Momma. Her plans for fame and fortune are continually way-laid by the Master of the Universe whose plans for her are more humble and far greater than anything she could imagine. She blogs at Golden Grasses