Hanukkah Hair: Palm Beach's Festival of Lights, Styled

Palm Beach's December calendar has two styling seasons, and everyone talks about only one of them. The other is Hanukkah — eight nights of temple services, family dinners, latke brunches, and candle-lighting photographs, in a county with one of the country's great Jewish communities. I style families for the festival every year, and here's the honest guide to Hanukweek hair that survives temple, table, and iPhone.

The eight-night problem, the real one: nobody wants eight separate styling appointments, and nobody should need them. The plan is three strategic sessions: the first night (the big candle-lighting, the family photographs), the Shabbat that falls within the week, and whatever night hosts the big family dinner. Between them, the styles are chosen for revival — sets that shake back to life, blowouts that survive three days with dry-shampoo strategy, waves that look better on day two honestly.

Temple services, the register: polished and respectful — the styling equivalent of your nice dress, not your gala gown. Smooth blowouts, low chignons, hair off the collarbone for suits and scarves. The family photographs after services want shine and a clean silhouette; December's dry-season air holds styles gorgeously, which is the climate's holiday gift.

The latke-dinner variable, the honest one: kitchen-adjacent styling is steam and oil in the air — updos and half-up styles beat all-down hair at the frying station, a truth learned from experience and one ruined blowout in 2019. The host styling the party styles her hair last, in another room, with the door closed.

The candle photographs, the detail that matters: menorah shots are warm, close-range, and flash-lit — warm light loves gloss and punishes frizz, so the finishing pass before candle lighting is worth its thirty seconds. The same shine engineering that carries a bride through candlelight carries a grandmother through the ninth frame.

The family styling session, the tradition: three generations, one morning, everyone finished before the first night — on-location styling at $225 per person per service, the warmest appointment of the season honestly. To book the chair for the festival, send the dates through the inquiry form — rates are in the investment guide, and the December calendar fills like the gala calendar does. Early, always.