COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RACHEL SHABI IN THE
INDEPENDENT
While modern festivities of the two holidays have many
similarities, there are really fundamental differences in the origins and
meanings of Christmas and Hanukkah.
Hanukkah marks a revolt by conservative Hebrew leaders
against Hellenistic culture as reflected by the Seleucids who ruled them, one
of the several fragment empires created after Alexander the Great.
At the time, Hellenistic culture was generally considered
the most advanced and enlightened around. The culture of the Old Testament, at
least those parts emphasized by conservative Jews such as the laws of
Leviticus, were pretty much the opposite.
So, one level, while a celebration of freedom, on another,
the event being celebrated was actually something of a step backward, not
towards enlightenment.
Christmas celebrates birth and, more specifically, the birth
of the coming of a new way of looking at things which puts away the old laws of
the New Testament.
Early Christian thought reflects indeed some of the very
Hellenistic culture rejected in the revolt of the Maccabees. Some of the
sayings attributed to Jesus - eg, the Golden Rule - were already formulated by
Hellenistic thinkers.
The early Christians were of course themselves Jews, but
they were part of the ferment of the times against tradition-bound Judaism and
the formation of groups and cults we see evidence of later in the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
There were a number of such movements who rejected this or
that aspect of traditional Judaism, and not just the followers of Jesus.
