The Festival of Lights, also known as Hanukkah, begins tonight at sundown. Free menorahs were available in dining halls Tuesday, sponsored by David and Chava Light and Chabad at Yale according to the labels on the boxes. The package included a metal stand, 44 candles and a blue dreidel.

Gather ’round the Green, and the Elm City will give you a treat. A 20-foot menorah will be lit on the Green tonight at 5:30 p.m., the New Haven Register reported. Chabad of New Haven is supporting the event and there will be a parade of cars with menorahs on top and a “carnival” at the Chabad Center.

O Tannenbaum. The Register also reported that the city will light its spruce on the Green Thursday. The lights will go on at 5:30 p.m., but the fun runs from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Yale will celebrate as well. According to Yale Hillel’s flyer of Hanukkah events, the Dwight Hall common room will feature a candle-lighting ceremony complete with a latke (potato pancake) eating contest following a dinner for the holiday at the Slifka Center.

Three Yale women were named “20 Amazing Young Women Who are Already Changing the World,” the Huffington Post reported last week. The Yalies honored were Jordana Alter Confino ’12, Sejal Hathi ’13 and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff ’13.

In case you want to have lunch with a stranger, now there is Yalelunch.com, which launched last night and sets up students for “non-romantic” lunches. Yalelunch.com comes after Harvardlunch.com. Both were launched by Harvard junior Seth Riddley.

Charles Hill, Yale’s diplomat in residence, called the leak of documents through WikiLeaks “something of a disaster for U.S. diplomacy,” according to a piece by Tunku Vardarajan on the Daily Beast.

Condoms bearing the logo for Q magazine, a new LGBTQ magazine, will be distributed today. 1,000 of the condoms will be around campus, according to a press release. The magazine will be available Friday.

A mysterious cache of female masturbation guides titled “Want You to Want You” appeared around campus this week. The booklets provide tips on how to masturbate, including with a partner. It also assured that the act will not “cause blindness, hairy palms, impotence, zits, addiction and stunted growth.”

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1938 Three freshmen swim in Woodbridge Pond — which is frozen over.

Correction: December 1, 2010

An earlier version of this article misstated what the packages including the free menorah’s held. The menorah package actually includes a metal — not plastic — stand and comes with 44 candles, enough for all of Hanukkah.

YALE DAILY NEWS