What Connects—and Separates—Hanukkah and Christmas I

A Guide for the Perplexed

Hanukkah is not a historically important holiday to Rabbinic Judaism. Partially, this is because it is not a feast in the biblical canon acknowledged by the rabbis—the Hebrew Bible or Tanak, the Masoretic Tradition of the Torah (“Teaching”), the Nevi’im (“Prophets”), and Kethuvim (“Writings”). This canon does not include any Greek texts, and so does not include 1 and 2 Maccabees where the stories connected to the feast occur. Partially, it’s also because the rabbis are not great fans of either the Hasmoneans who invented the feast or the Herodians who maintained its observance under Roman rule. And partially, it’s because the rabbinic project came to define postbiblical Judaism over the course of the first millennium, as the Hellenistic Diaspora where such feasts and tales were popular outside of Judea was either annihilated or absorbed by the Romans and the church.