Worldly Hanukkah

The other day I was in a conversation with my mother about getting Hanukkah books for the kids. I saw some on Amazon and was somewhat interested as an alternative to the Christmas movies and cartoons all over TV these days. Really I am uncomfortable buying these books without reading them myself first though. I would love for the kids to have some Hanukkah books, but I also want to make sure the Hanukkah being presented is not as worldly as the Christmas junk out there. If we are switching in order to avoid the worldliness, I don’t want to trip into it all over again!

As I explained that I wanted to make sure the Hanukkah books we picked were not straight worldly celebration books, she commented that Hanukkah is a pretty worldly celebration anyway. This is nothing against my mother, who I credit as the one who got me heading in this direction in the first place! Her understanding of Hanukkah is fairly worldly, and I can certainly understand why! The world’s presentation of Hanukkah is worldly, and unfortunately, many Jewish families who still celebrate Hanukkah celebrate it in a fairly worldly way. We even include some worldly aspects as gift giving too, so we’re aren’t exactly purists!

Yet, Hanukkah is NOT a worldly celebration. Nor does a Jewish feast with celebration aspects mean that it is strictly worldly. Many of the feasts have celebratory aspects – Passover in particular. God has done great things and we should celebrate! We should party and rejoice and dance and play games! We should be happy! Happiness does not equal worldly. To be fair, I do not think this is at all where my mother was going with her comment. It is just something that occurred to me later on. I know many Christians who frown on Jews because they drink wine! I mean, really?! Jesus made wine! Frown on that!

Hanukkah from a historical perspective is a time to rejoice that God provided for Israel as they were faithful in immediate obedience to rededicate their Temple even when it wasn’t convenient (too little oil). Hanukkah is also a time to consider Jesus as the Light of the World, to re-dedicate today’s Temple – ourselves, to consider what we do as individuals to keep the Lamp of God burning in our own lives…. The list could go on. We could easily focus on family togetherness, presents and parties. In this world, distractions are easy to come by. But Hanukkah is rich with meaning and significance for Christians, much more so that I even attempted to put into this post. Jesus wasn’t born in December. The Feast of Dedication did in fact occur on the 25th of Kislev. More likely Jesus was born during one of the other Feasts. I’ll celebrate His birth then, and celebrate Him every day in between.