My Hanukkah-mas Story

The weather warmed and all our snow disappeared. However, it began to snow early this morning and now I’m looking out the window at a beautiful snow-globe landscape. Occasionally the wind whips up the snow so it looks like the planet Hoth from the Star Wars universe. The chickens all decided to stay safely within their coop. I’m trying to decide if they are wimps or wise. Hannah Joy insisted on taking me for a walk down the driveway, as she does every day. I didn’t mind because I had a letter to put in the mailbox.

We are now well into the holiday season and I decided to tell you my own personal Christmas story. More accurately, this is my Hanukkah-mas story.

My family was not Christian so we didn’t have a Christ-centered holiday as I was growing up. However, from the time I was two years old, our widowed, childless neighbor took me, and later my younger sister, to church. It was easier for us to spend Saturday nights with our beloved neighbor and she’d get us up and ready for church the next morning. We spent Saturday nights and all day Sunday with her throughout my childhood until she died during my senior year of high school. Because of her, we became Christians and learned the real meaning of Christmas.

I loved the magic of Christmas as a child and have many warm memories of the holiday. However, as a teenager, I yearned to bring more of Christ into Christmas Day at home. By this time, all of my older siblings had left home so I started getting up very early on Christmas morning and reading the story of Christ’s birth in the Bible alone by the beautiful glow of the Christmas lights. My Dad had a grandfather’s clock which my older sister and I bought for him one Christmas by crocheting slippers for months and selling them door-to-door. I still remember the tick-tocking of the clock punctuating the silence of those early Christmas mornings.

We often hear it quoted that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” but over the years, in the various seasons of my life, I have struggled to find Christ in Christmas. He always seemed to get lost in the hectic blur of decorating for the holiday, shopping for gifts for family, relatives, and secret pals at work and church, sending Christmas cards, making holiday treats, and rushing to church practices, programs, and teas. There was also all the commercial pushing of “buy more!” I enjoyed many aspects of the traditions, but in the whirl of activity, it always seemed as if there was too much busyness to pause and celebrate Christ even when the intent was to celebrate Him as the Reason for the Season. He seemed more of an “add-on” at the end of exhausting weeks.

Several years ago, my husband’s sister spoke excitedly of the Christmas program at her church. She said that her favorite part was the children running around dressed as elves and a song the choir sang called “Run, Run, Reindeer.” It actually made me sad and…disgusted? I have no problem with singing fun songs, but Christmas is the one time when many people go to church and are exposed to the gospel story. To sing fictional songs at CHURCH, to miss the opportunity to share the Reason for the Season, seems very wrong to me. The church could have proclaimed the most significant event in human history and instead it offered elves and reindeer? The Bible warned that wolves would infiltrate the church and I believe many have.

Christmas also involved some heartache. As I’ve written before, when I was engaged to my husband, my Mom tried to seize control of our relationship. I respectfully refused to let her and she turned all my family against me. It was then that I learned that my family was very dysfunctional. I was used to big family gatherings and suddenly I had no family so Christmas became lonely and painful. Christmas is actually a very difficult season for many people who have been rejected, abused, have lost loved ones, and so forth. The suicide rates are highest at Christmas. I struggled at first with these Christmas holidays, but…well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

15-20 years ago, I found myself studying Hebrew and learning about the Hebraic perspective of the Scriptures, which is a story in itself that I will not take time to tell. However, seeing the Bible through the Hebraic lens exponentially deepened the Scriptures for me. What was beautiful before became breathtakingly awesome. Things that I didn’t really understand before became much more understandable. I’d like to point out that Jesus was Jewish and almost all His early followers were Jewish, including His disciples. The early believers, among them many priests (Acts 6:7), considered Jesus to be the Messiah as prophesied in the Old Testament rather than a separate “gentile” faith. Jews and Christians share a common faith. The division between them came later to our detriment.

My own little family began to celebrate the Biblical Feasts as Christians because we believe they all point to Jesus. The Spring Feasts are about His first coming and the Fall Feasts speak of His second coming. As I began to learn about the Hebraic perspective of the Bible, I began to understand the Hebrew idioms and word plays that were lost to me before. For example, Jesus would have actually been known as “Yeshua,” which means “God saves” or “salvation.” This brings understanding and beauty to Matthew 1:21: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Yeshua [God saves], because he will save his people from their sins.” This understanding also makes verses like Psalms 118:14 beautiful: “God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation [Yeshua].”

I LOVE the name Yeshua and often call Him that, although I use the name Jesus with most Christians because that is the name they are familiar with. My favorite Bible version is the Complete Jewish Bible because it uses Hebraic names and terms. I often use more familiar translations when speaking to people who might not understand them.

So now on to Hanukkah. In John 10:22 it is called the “Feast of Dedication” which Yeshua celebrated. Hanukkah is tied to a time when Israel was struggling for existence. In 167 BC, Israel was under the rule of Antiochus Epiphanes (Greek for “God Manifest”), who was known for his cruelty and delusions of deity. His enemies referred to him as Antiochus Epimanes (“madman”). Among many atrocities he committed as he tried to Hellenize Israel, Antiochus desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, dedicating it to Greek gods and even sacrificing a pig on the altar. Under Greek rule, Torah-study was forbidden. To disguise their studies, Israelites would pretend to be playing dreidel games if anyone came by. Today, the dreidel bears Hebrew letters representing the phrase, “Nes Gadol Hayah Sham (a great miracle happened there),” in reference to Hanukkah. The books 1 and 2 Maccabees describe Israel’s suffering under Antiochus, as well as the successful revolt against him, which was led by the Maccabees, a Jewish family of priests, who refused to assimilate to a pagan culture. After winning their freedom, the Jewish people rededicated the Temple to God.

Hanukkah is a testament to God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people by preserving them through war and persecution – and His faithfulness in fulfilling His promises to produce a Messiah from the line of David. If the Jewish people had succumbed to Hellenizing pressures and lost their religious and ethnic distinctiveness, the Messianic prophecies could not have been fulfilled. That is worth celebrating.

Hanukkah celebration involves lighting a special nine-candle Hanukkah menorah called a “hanukkiah.” One candle is called the “Shamash” or servant candle. It is either elevated or set apart from the other eight candles. It is lit first and then used to light the other candles. An additional candle is lit each of the eight nights of the holiday.

For believers the servant candle is a symbol of Yeshua: For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45) Yeshua said that He is the Light of the World (John 8:12; 9:15). At the same time, He told His followers that we are also lights (Matthew 5:14) and that we must shine the Light to the world–just as the hanukkiah carries forth the light that originates in the Shamash candle. Hanukkah is also a reminder to me that we are not to assimilate to an evil culture, we are to stand firm in faith and shine out into the darkness.

Hanukkah is an annual memorial of the cleansing of the Temple and rededication of the altar. The New Testament compares our bodies to a temple of the Living God (1 Cor. 6:19-20) so Hanukkah is also a reminder to us to rededicate our lives to following Yeshua. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

This is why I love Hanukkah. The first time we decided to celebrate it, our son exclaimed, “Cool! Does that mean we get eight more days of presents???” I said, “NO!” We purposely keep our celebration very simple and restful and focused on Yeshua. We light the beautiful candles and read verses from throughout the Bible that refer to His light. Sometimes I make latkes; a Christian Jewish friend shared her grandmother’s recipe with me.

At first, we celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas, but gradually we let go of the busyness of Christmas. I found a book which, if I remember correctly, was called “Unplug the Christmas Machine,” which basically recommended letting go of anything that didn’t bring you close to the Reason for the Season. After our cats finished destroying our Christmas tree by climbing it and knocking off the decorations, we didn’t get another. We don’t always give gifts but if we do, we give out of love, not obligation. This year my husband and I asked each other, “Do you want to give each other gifts?” But we couldn’t think of anything we wanted so we decided not to. Instead, we will buy oranges and a mixture of nuts–a holiday treat. We plan to make hard candy next week, which we haven’t done in years. We might watch our favorite movies. Or not. And we will listen to our favorite songs. The peacefulness of our Christmas takes me back to when I read the Christmas story by the light of the Christmas tree as my dad’s grandfather clock tick-tocked into the silence.

Yesterday, I made homemade butter. I enjoy making butter. I do it in a food processor rather than a butter churn, then squeeze out the buttermilk I use later for pancakes, and then I rinse the butter and press it into molds. I decided to listen to Christmas hymns as I worked, starting out with a YouTube playlist of Christmas music from The Piano Guys. I love their creative music. One of the songs they played was their rendition of “Angels From the Realms of Glory” with 1,000 singers accompanying them. It was very beautiful and the words brought tears to my eyes:

Angels from the realms of glory
wing your flight o’er all the earth
ye who sang creation’s story
now proclaim Messiah’s birth

Saints before the altar bending
Watching on in hope and fear
Suddenly the Lord descending
In His Temple shall appear

Though an infant now we view Him
He shall fill His Father’s throne
Gather all the nations to Him
Every knee shall then bow down

Gloria, in excelsis Deo

My husband observed that many of the Christian Christmas songs are actually what he calls “kingdom songs.” They tie the baby in the manger to His earthly ministry and to His returning as the King of Glory to reign over the nations, such as in the lyrics above. It’s sort of a shame these aren’t sung throughout the year since they have meaning beyond this one season. They are very beautiful, very meaningful, and they are affecting me especially deeply this year. Past, present, and future collide at this time of year as I slide from celebrating the Light of the World who overcomes the darkness at Hanukkah into celebrating the coming of the King of Kings. Both these holidays are filled with beautiful meaning.

I do not feel lonely at this season. I do not feel that I cannot find the Messiah in the exhausting busyness. I feel a quiet awe that God so loved the world that He sent His Son so that He could be Emmanuel, God With Us. (The Emmanuel song at the link to the left is sung in both English and Hebrew.)

The Wonder of Wonders*

The wonder of wonders as she looked on His face
That this little boy spoke the worlds in their place
The stars and the moon, shining brightly on them
The earth and the sun were created by Him.

The wonder of wonders as she looked down and smiled
That He was her maker as well as her child
He created the womb that had given Him birth
He was God incarnate come down to the earth

The wonder of wonders as she heard His small cry
That this voice had thundered on Mount Sinai
The hand that she held so tenderly
Had made a dry path thru the mighty Red Sea.

The wonder of wonders as a Father looked on
In eternity past that this was His son
Had sent Him to die on Calvary’s tree
And that is the wonder of wonders to me.

Chorus:
The wonder of wonders oh how could it be
That God became Flesh and was given for me.
The Almighty came down and walked among men
The wonder of wonders He died for my sin.

(*The final verse isn’t sung by The Inspirations)

Joy to the World

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n, and heav’n, and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

I will leave you with one last thought that I often ponder at this time of year:

Luke 2 says that after the angels left, the shepherds hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. Later, according to Matthew 2, when the Magi arrived in Jerusalem asking where the King of the Jews was, King Herod was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. Herod called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law to ask them where the Messiah was to be born. Then he went out and killed all the babies of Bethlehem in an attempt to murder Him. These were unusual events that would have been marveled over and talked about for years. Did you ever wonder how many people made the connection between those events and the adult Yeshua thirty years later? Probably quite a few because these events wouldn’t have been forgotten.

May the light of Hanukkah-mas fill your heart this season.