Hanukkah 2026 eight-nights video: a countdown from eight clips

Hanukkah in 2026 begins at sundown on Friday, December 4 and lasts until sundown on Saturday, December 12, so a shop or community group that wants an eight-nights countdown has to have the clips ready before the first candle. The workable plan is eight clips of about four to six seconds each, one per night, with the night number burned in as a caption cue, then joined into one video for the first night and posted again one clip at a time.

The dates come from My Jewish Learning, read on 2026-10-03. Everything about what Sume does comes from its video generation, captions and Timeline docs.

The calendar to plan against

Because the holiday starts at sundown, the first post should go up on the afternoon of December 4 and the last night's post on December 11 or 12 depending on how you count nights. Decide that once, and write it into the caption cues.

Eight clips, one idea each

Give every night one small job so the series does not feel like the same video eight times. Use your own photos as first frames where you can: a product, a table, a window, a family-run counter.

• Nights 1 to 3: three products, one per night, each with a line of caption text.
• Night 4: the people behind the shop.
• Night 5: a gift-wrapping close-up.
• Night 6: a customer-friendly tip, such as shipping cutoff dates you control.
• Night 7: a behind-the-scenes moment.
• Night 8: a thank-you, with your hours.

Burn the night number

Send each clip to the captions endpoint with cues, which are phrase cards with text, start and end in seconds. Cues skip speech-to-text and burn exactly the copy you give, which is what you want for silent clips. Then Timeline can place all eight clips as ordered video slots with short fades and one music bed.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: hanukkah-night-3" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://example.com/night-3.mp4",
    "style": "slam",
    "cues": [
      {"text": "Night 3 of 8", "start": 0.2, "end": 2.5}
    ]
  }'

Be careful with religious imagery

Image and video models can get a menorah, candle count or Hebrew lettering subtly wrong. Do not generate sacred objects from a text prompt and trust the result. Use photographs you took, or ask someone from the community to review each frame before you post. Prefer clips of your own products and people, and let the caption text carry the holiday message.

Also remember the example URL above stands in for a clip you have already imported; the captions endpoint needs a fetchable public HTTPS video URL.