#etz chayim

a) trees = pretty

b) Chanukiyahs are a branched object - they need 9 branches - and what is a lovely AND structurally stable item that typically has many branches? a tree! Basically, I would assume that branched items evoke comparisons to each other anyway, so just roll with it

c) in a memorable and popular line of Tanach, the Torah is described as a “tree of life” and this is often taken as a metaphor for Judaism in general (plus in other memorable lines of Tanach, the Jewish people as a whole and righteous people in the abstract are each compared to trees as well). So maybe it’s to evoke that?

But there is no specific trees-Chanukah connection, other than the two olive branches appearing in Zechariah’s vision that’s read on the Shabbat of Chanukah, and the whole olive harvest thing in general (and that would be an olive trees connection in particular so not relevant to most tree-like Chanukiyas).

On to question two: how long to leave the candles burning for! This one I actually have a definite (if qualified) answer for you! The Chanukah candles have to burn for half an hour of time during which (a) it is dark out and (b) it is still reasonable for people to be out and about. So if you light them as the sun is setting, that half hour of time that they count for begins not when you light but only after the sun has completely gone down and, conversely, if it’s getting late, you have to make sure that they’ll be burning for half an hour of time when people would still normally going to be coming home from work and so on, even if they’ll still be burning past that.

(This is because a major part of the reason for lighting Chanukah candles is “publicizing the miracle” - so they have to be visible, in terms of both showing up as light in the darkness, and in terms of being lit at a time that people might reasonably be outside to see them. This is also why Chanukiyahs are supposed to be lit in front of a window or outdoors.)

Question three-ish: SO MANY SPELLINGS this has a simple and very annoying answer: the only correct spellings for the name of the holiday are   חנכה and חנוכה (multiple spellings even in the Hebrew because that ו is acting as a vowel, and vowels are often left out / implied / replaced with more succinct vowels so it isn’t strictly necessary). It’s a Hebrew word! It’s spelled in Hebrew, which has a completely different alphabet! All English transliterations, of this word and of any Hebrew word, are all equally correct/incorrect. Part of the problem with Chanukah in particular is that first letter ח represents a sound which doesn’t even exist in the English language, so there’s a lot of different opinions on how to represent it in English letters (for the record - it’s pronounced by making a guttural sound at the back of your throat, like the ch in Bach or like the letter jota in Spanish). I typically write it as “Chanukah” and could write out a detailed explanation of exactly why this transliteration feels most correct to me, but at the end of the day, they’re all equally wrong / equally valid because we’re transliterating from one alphabet to another so everything is BASICALLY arbitrary.