DrIBEX Ideas

I often use the word Messiahmas, simply to emphasize the Jewishness of the Christian Natvivity message. But is mixing Hanukkah with Christmas just going too far?

Let me explain. Hanukkah begins on Chislev 25 and continues for eight days. The correspondence with the number of December 25 is only a coincidence and really has no significance because the Jewish holiday falls on different dates on our calendar every year. This year its dates are December 21-28, but the first candle is lit on the evening of the 20th on our calendar. Each night an additional candle is lit, commemorating the traditional miracle that the Menorah burned for eight days with only one day’s supply of oiI. I say “traditional,” not because I don’t believe in miracles, but because the earliest texts that describe the events, the books of Maccabees and Josephus, make no mention of the miracle of the oil. What they do describe is the liberation of the Temple in December, 165 BC, after three years of defilement by the troops of the Syrian/Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes.

This vicious persecution produced faithful Jewish martyrs who were prophesied about in Daniel 11:32, and were referred to later in Hebrews 11: 35-36 as members of the Hall of Fame of Faith. This is sometimes called the first religious persecution in history, but it was not the first time the Jewish people were threatened with destruction by Gentile rulers. On the three occasions that ancient Jews were threatened with extinction, they ended up each time with a holiday! Think of it: Pharaoh’s threats in Exodus, and the Jews get Passover; Haman’s threats in Esther, and the Jews get Purim; the threats of Antiochus, and the Jews get Hanukkah!

But what has any of this to do with the Nativity of Jesus? Sometimes Hanukkah is called the Festival of Lights, and Jesus was the Light of the World! True but that may be coincidental. The Gospel of John mentions that Jesus was in the Temple of Jerusalem during Hanukkah and while teaching there, He made one of His greatest claims to Deity (John 10:22-30). So it appears that Jesus observed Hanukkah!

But the unseen connection of Hanukkah with Christmas lies in this fact. If Antiochus had been successful in destroying the Jews, there would have been no Jewish Miriam and no Jewish Bethlehem to provide the people and the place for our Messiah to be born! One might say that if there had been no Hanukkah, then there would have been no Christmas!

So when you wish your Jewish acquaintance a Happy Hanukkah this year, tell them that! You may be surprised at where the conversation could then lead!