Day: 24. December 2019

Hanukkah and Christmas

This reflection can invite us to listen to how these two feasts echo one another. Light… for Hanukkah is celebrated with lights, eight small flames that are lit on each of the feast’s eight days. Already Flavius Josephus called Hanukkah “the lights”, because the victory of the Maccabeans manifested the victory of light over darkness; and St. Jerome takes up this interpretation for his own purposes in his commentary on Jn 10:22, when he says: “the light of freedom”. In rabbinic tradition, it is the victory of the Torah (“a lamp for my steps, a light on my path”) over the darkness of the Greek empire’s paganism, which forbade the Torah. The Temple… for Hanukkah remembers the “dedication” (which is what the word “Hanukkah” means) of the Temple after its desecration by the Greek empire (cf. 1 Macc 4:36-61 and 2 Macc 10:1-6). The Jewish commentaries on this feast strongly emphasize the significance of the Temple as God’s dwelling place in the midst of God’s people, whence the great importance that was given to its …