In the Winter holiday season, our third-grade public school teacher drew a line down the length of the blackboard and titled each of the two resultant sections, “Christmas” and “Hanukkah.” She then listed in each half several of the attractive traditions of each holiday. We remember her kind efforts at social inclusion and student brotherhood to this day,a great many decades later,
Yet, concomitant with our recognition of her kindness, we nevertheless felt that the same was somewhat overdone; since Christmas is, inarguably, the most celebrated and ornate of Christian religious festivals and observances, while Hanukkah, presumably, is a historical observance of far less cultural impact. As we grew older and more reflective, we realized that the celebration of Hanukkah’s military success in its war with the Seleucid Empire was no less than an existentially vital event for Christianity as well as the Jewish People.
Ancient history shows that Christianity originated in the first Century in Judea as a Jewish sect, centered on the life, teachings, and crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, with its theology spreading through the missionary work of Apostles like Paul, across the Roman Empire, and empirically developing from a modest Jewish movement to a world religion.
It is inarguable that since Christianity developed from (had its roots in) Judaism, had the Seleucid Empire in the Maccabean Wars, (whose victory is annually celebrated by the Festival of Hannukkah), been successful in their earlier attempts to destroy the Jewish population, there would, as an empirical result, have been no Christianity.
From a historical standpoint, we came to realize that the “Festival of Lights” (Hannukkah) is a holiday whose joyous celebration (seven days) is an occasion of formidably important significance, perhaps unrealized to Christians as well as Jews.
As a universally metaphysical matter, it is difficult to rationally comprehend the age-old, horrifically demonstrated institution of bigotry, bearing in mind that, as depicted in the New Testament, Jesus, empirically, was a tan-skinned Palestinian Jew.
-p.
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