Hanukkah

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Temple in 164 BCE after the Maccabean revolt against Seleucid rule, and the earliest accounts of it do not mention the oil.

First Maccabees and Second Maccabees, written within roughly a century of the events, describe the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus IV, the revolt led by Mattathias and his sons, the recapture of Jerusalem, the cleansing of the sanctuary and the institution of an eight-day festival. Second Maccabees explicitly models the eight days on Sukkot, which the rebels had been unable to keep in the field, and Sukkot is eight days. Josephus, writing in the first century, calls it the Festival of Lights and says he does not know why that name was given, which is a remarkable admission from someone that close to it.

The story of a single cruse of undefiled oil that burned for eight days appears first in the Babylonian Talmud, at Shabbat 21b, compiled centuries later. It is the story every Jewish child learns, and it is not in the historical sources.

This is not a case of one account being false. It is a case of a festival whose commemorative content shifted. The Maccabean books celebrate a military and political victory won by a priestly family that then founded a dynasty; the rabbinic tradition, writing after two catastrophic revolts against Rome, has notably little enthusiasm for armed rebellion, and the miracle relocates the festival's meaning from the sword to divine provision.

Neither book of Maccabees is in the Jewish canon. Both are in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.

Hanukkah is not a biblically mandated festival, carries no prohibition of work, and is by traditional reckoning a minor observance, far less significant than Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.

Its modern prominence, particularly in North America, has an identifiable cause: it falls in December. In a society organised around Christmas, a Jewish festival in the same weeks acquired a weight its liturgical status does not warrant, and acquired customs, gift-giving on a large scale, in particular, that it did not previously have. The traditional practice was small gifts of money to children. The rest is twentieth-century, and Jewish writers have discussed it critically at length.

The calendar keeps it in December, which is why the parallel holds. The festival begins on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, and because the Hebrew calendar is corrected to the solar year it stays in late November to late December permanently.

The ritual core is the lighting. Candles are added one per night, and the classic dispute, recorded in the Talmud, between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, on whether to begin with eight and decrease or begin with one and increase, was settled for increase, on the principle that one raises in matters of holiness. The lamp is to be placed where it can be seen from outside, publicising the event, and that requirement has been suspended in times of danger.

The Hebrew word means dedication, and it refers to the Temple, not to the lights.