Hanukkah: Feast of Lights

Today, December 20, marks the beginning of the 8-day Feast of Lights, known to Jews world wide as Hanukkah.

What are the origins of this celebration? In the 400-some-odd years between the Old and New Testaments, some remarkable events took place.
The Hebrew calendar marks the beginning of this memorial as the 25th day of Kislev.

Let's go back to the 2nd century before Christ. Jerusalem is occupied by Syrian Greeks, under the bloodthirsty reign of emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Epiphanes banned Jewish religious practices, and in the course of his purge, defiled the temple at Jerusalem.

Epiphanes ordered the priests to sacrifice a pig on the temple altar. The family of the Maccabees consisted of the father, Mattathias, high priest in that time; and his five sons. Mattathias refused to so dishonor God. Pigs were an abomination to the Jews.

Another priest, perhaps hoping to avoid bloodshed, agreed to do the emperor's bidding. Mattathias, wielding a sword, not only killed the priest, but also the emissaries of the emperor.

Then they fled, Mattathias and his five sons, along with other faithful Jews. Led by Judah Maccabee, they began waging a campaign against the power of the Syrian army that, seemingly hopeless, lasted three years; and miraculously accomplished its purpose of ridding the area around Jerusalem of the Syrian scourge.

When they'd finally routed the Syrians, they began the process of scrupulously cleaning the temple, in order to purge the curse, and re-dedicate it to God. They had enough oil for only one day's light in the lamps, and it was dark inside the temple. God intervened. The oil lasted 8 days, giving light to all the temple's dark corners, till it was scrubbed clean of all offensiveness.

The Word Hanukkah means Dedication. 250 years later, historian Flavius Josephus referred to this celebration as the Feast of Lights, and it's borne the dual names ever since. Fasting and grieving are forbidden on Hanukkah. This is a celebration of God's supernatural intervention, both in the war and in the oil for the lights.

You'll find the stories of the Maccabees in the section known as the Apocrypha.

Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas. Blessings Always.
W.