A miracle of
light
by Mike Oettle
WHY do we celebrate Christmas? Easter (or, more correctly, Passover) follows a pattern laid down in Scripture, but as a season Christmas seems to come from nowhere. Certainly, December in Israel is too cold for shepherds to be in the fields keeping watch over their sheep – even the sheep are kept indoors. Several Christian sects refuse to celebrate Christmas at all because, they say, it has a pagan origin in the Roman festival of Saturnalia.
Sometimes it seems a good thing to be rid of Christmas, with all its drunken partying, expensive excess and customs which often have more to do with gluttony, commercialism and pagan survivals than with the gospel message.
Yet, in the words of a spiritual song, “I will celebrate nativity, for it has a place in history”. If we had no date on the calendar to mark the birth of God incarnate, Immanuel, we would have to devise one. And, indeed, pagan associations aside, December is a good time to do just that.
You see, even though 17 December was Saturnalia and 25 December the birthday of the Persian god Mithra (popular in the Roman army), there is a scriptural festival that is fixed in December. We tend to forget this for two reasons: the Church of Rome appears originally to have set the season to draw Christians into church at a time when heathens were indulging in excess; and the scriptural origin of Christmas is recorded in a book which Protestant Christianity is not always happy to acknowledge as part of the Bible: the First Book of the Maccabees.
The Maccabees? you might ask. Weren’t they around before Jesus? The connection is a miracle that, by the time of Jesus, had become part of Jewish life in the shape of the Feast of Dedication[1], mentioned in chapter 10 of John’s Gospel. Indeed, it would seem that the celebration of this feast – also called Hanukka, or Chanukah – by early Jewish Christians is the main reason why it is still part of our calendar.
Ironically, the date was originally set by a pagan king to celebrate his birthday. His name was Antiochus Epiphanes[2], the Greek ruler of Syria, and in 169 BC he campaigned unsuccessfully against Egypt. In a rage, he headed homewards, determined to punish his subjects for his defeat. The Jews, he decided, would have to become good pagans just like everyone else in Syria. On his birthday, recorded in 1 Maccabees as the 25th of Kislev (December), he celebrated his birthday by sacrificing a pig to
Olympian Zeus on the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem.
As if this was not enough to desecrate the Temple and ensure that every God-fearing Jew in creation would be after his blood, he ordered that pagan sacrifices be made in every town and village in Judæa. When the order was carried out in Modin, 5km north of Jerusalem, a priest called Mattathias and his five sons killed the first Jew to sacrifice a pig, as well as the soldiers sent to reinforce the sacrilege and anyone else who resisted them.
Forced by this act into rebellion, the sons of Mattathias began a guerrilla war. Mattathias died soon afterwards and the revolt was led by his third son, Judas, known as the Hammer (Maccabeus). After three years of war, Judas captured the Temple on the anniversary of Antiochus’s “abomination which causes desolation” (prophesied by Daniel) and immediately re-dedicated it.
But the men who had restored the Temple to its state of holiness were cut off. The citadel of Jerusalem was still in the hands of the false high priest Jason and his armed forces, and for eight days no supplies could get through.
There was only enough consecrated oil in the Temple for one lamp to burn for a single night – yet the lamp of perpetual light burned unflickering in the Holy Place for eight whole days.
The miracle was not forgotten, and it was decreed that each year in December[3] for eight days eight lamps or candles should be lit in every Jewish household, beginning with one on the first day, two on the second and so on until Day 8; and somehow a ninth lamp or candle crept in, too. This, then, is the origin of the nine-branched candelabra (menorah) used on this occasion in place of the more usual seven-branched menorah, which symbolises God's perfection in the seven days of Creation.
Christians are often inclined to dismiss Chanukah as a copycat festival, but it should now be clear that this Festival of Lights[4] came before Christ – and, indeed, has much to do with the Light of the World.
But this only scratches the surface of the question “Why do we celebrate Christmas?”
