Hanukkah....This Year Begins On Christmas

                Hanukkah....or Chanukah if you prefer....the Festival of Lights.....falls on....or rather begins on Christmas this year.....something that has only happened four other times since 1900....although in 2027....Hanukkah will begin on Christmas Eve.
                Before the great Maccabean revolt....maybe a third,,,,according to some sources....of the Jews....had become what was known as....Hellenists. Since Alexander the Great....and then with the Seleucids....many of the Jews became more Greek than Jewish....and this caused a great division. The Seleucid king....Antiochus IV Epiphanes....did not have a temperate response to the Jews who wanted to remain Jews....as did those who preceded him who were considerate of the Jewish religion. He put a statue of Zeus in the temple courtyard and sacrificed a pig on the altar.
                 The ensuing war.....led by the guerilla tactics of the Maccabees....lasted years....but they were victorious....and it was time to cleanse and rededicate the temple....which was a very ritualistic process and would take time....and they only had one jar of the acceptable pure olive oil for the lights. It would take eight days to prepare enough olive oil to finish the purification....but....according to tradition anyway....that one jar lasted eight days when it should only have lasted for one day. So that was the miracle that is celebrated today on this eight day holiday. This is a happy festival.  
                Will Hanukkah have prophetic significance as most of the other feast days and holidays have already done at times....(the Sukkot attack of October 2023 being the latest)....and probably will in the future? I don't know.....but I have for years paid close attention during the main Jewish feast and fast days....and I would expect that something extraordinary might happen on some future Festival of Lghts.....or Feast of Dedication as Matthew puts it in his gospel....of which Jesus was in attendance.