AND THE LIGHT GREW BRIGHTER AND BRIGHTER
By Lewis John Eron
The Reconstructionist, Winter 1991/1992, pp. 18-19
There is a home in my neighborhood that is famous for the lavish extent of its Christmas decorations. The house, yard, trees, and bushes are festooned with lights and ornaments. Secular and religious icons of the holiday season populate the lawn and roost on the roof. Cars filled with children wend their way past the house in order to enjoy this most lavish display, which is, without a doubt, out of the ordinary. Most of my Christian neighbors mark their holiday by a necklace of lights around a fir, a wreath hanging on the door, and a brightly lit, cheerfully decorated Christmas tree in the window.
Though some might think this highly decorated house to be overwrought and garish, I find in it a certain naive beauty. It is as good an example of honest, contemporary American folk art as can be seen in our area. It is a moving testimony to the love this homeowner has for his holiday and his desire to share his joy with the community. Every evening during the holiday season, I go a little bit out of my way to see the display and share its creator’s happiness.
Jews don’t really understand the Christmas tree and its significance for our Christian neighbors. All too often, we dismiss the Christmas tree as a Christian adaptation of Northern European pagan religious rites that center around the winter solstice. It is without a doubt correct that the decorated tree that graces the homes of most American Christians has its origins in the rites and ceremonies of their pagan ancestors of a thousand or so years ago. Yet we make a great mistake if we dismiss the Christmas tree and devalue the customs and ceremonies of our Christian ‘neighbors at the time of their winter festival.
I do not write here to defend Christmas trees or speak on behalf of Christian customs; my goal is to teach about Judaism. Nevertheless, when we use the Christmas tree as a part of a polemic against Christianity, we misunderstand the deep religious feelings we all share and put our-selves in danger of denigrating Jewish spirituality. We discover two deep spiritual truths in the sociological, anthropological, and historical explanation of the origins of the Christmas tree. Clearly, the pagan tribal people of ancient Europe were wiser than we might have thought. Ancient men and women often had a clearer notion of the spiritual powers present in the natural world than we moderns seem to have. The shift of the seasons, the movements of the sun and stars, and the changing faces of the moon touched their lives in ways we cannot even imagine. This season was of particular importance. For people living in an age before electric illumination, the lengthening of the day was surely a significant event. It clearly marked the start of a new year. The sun was figuratively and, from their perspective, literally reborn and renewed. Who would not celebrate?
The early Christians understood this ancient wisdom. They recognized the spiritual power experienced this time of the year and they did what good religious people do all the time – they reinterpreted the experience according to their lights. What better symbol for the new light brought to the earth by the birth of their redemptive figure, Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth, than the start of the return of daylight, the restoration of the sun?
From the twin disciplines of anthropology and history of religions, we learn that certain times during the year are occasions for heightened spiritual feelings and that each faith takes these times and enhances their value by infusing them with the deep teachings of that tradition.
What do Jews, do? First of all, Chanukah is our winter holiday, which celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. Chanukah is the only Maccabean holiday that we still celebrate. It was the one that was best able to be re-interpreted from a political celebration of the second Jewish commonwealth in the land of Israel to a religious holiday meaningful to Jews throughout the world and over the long centuries. One of the names for Chanukah is “Chag HaOrim” the Festival of the Lights. We all have been taught a number of explanations of this appellation. Though the popular answer reflects the legend of the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days, the more sophisticated answer is that Chanukah, the holiday of the rededication of the Temple, is based on the holiday that commemorates the holiday of Sukkot. Lights were part of the celebration of the “Water Drawing Festival” that was the high point of the holiday of Sukkot.
There is also an anthropological explanation of the name “Chag HaOrim”. This explanation understands the kindling of the menorah as a Jewish re-working of ancient ceremonies celebrating the return of the sun by the lighting of lights and fires; this is not dissimilar to the somewhat later Christian custom of the illuminated tree. Although this explanation may seem modern, secular, and even a bit irreverent, the rabbis of the Talmud, writing more than fifteen hundred years ago, understood the sociological, anthropological, and historical roots of our Festival of Lights. They were not frightened by anthropological information and sociological data. Rather, their ability to incorporate this information according to their understanding of the Jewish tradition provides us with a model for handling the insights into religion that the modern social sciences provide us.
Our ancient sages understanding of the anthropological roots of Chanukah appear in the following passage:
Our rabbis taught that when Adam, the first person, saw the days growing shorter, he said, “Woe is me, is it because of my sin that the world is growing dark and returning to chaos?” So he stood for eight days fasting and praying.
When the winter solstice arrived, he saw that the day was lengthened, so Adam said, “So this is the order of creation.” Therefore, he celebrated an eight-day festival. And in the following year he celebrated both periods, the one before and the one after the solstice.
For this reason, the rabbis teach us, is why the heathens celebrate the calends and the saturnalia in honor of their deities, even though Man had consecrated those days to the honor of God. (b. Avodah Zarah 8a, Gen Rabba 11)
The rabbis are doing three things with this somewhat obscure story. One, they recognize the spiritual significance of the winter solstice. Two, they acknowledge that this period is a time of heightened spiritual awareness and activity for all humanity from the time of Adam to the present. Lastly, they claim that already in Adam’s time there was an eight-day festival at the time of the winter solstice dedicated to God. Chanukah, so to speak, existed even in Adam’s time.
But even this is not good enough for them because they also wanted to give Jewish meaning to this holiday that they were able to explain with a sociological/anthropological model. They were able to provide Jewish content to the story by tying it to the Torah portion read on the Shabbat of Chanukah. In Genesis Rabba the major collection of rabbinic stories and midrash based on the Book of Genesis, the commentary on this portion (Genesis XX) begins with the story cited above. It is clear, therefore, that to the rabbis who edited Genesis Rabba. Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. was tied to Adam’s experience of the return of sunlight.
And, what was it that Adam felt – when after eight days of praying and fasting he noticed that the days were growing longer – if not the experience of God’s forgiveness and God's grace. The Jewish twist to the story is the interpretation that the renewal of the day is another sign of God’s ever-patient love and concern for all humanity.
One can see how the rabbis of old used this story to demonstrate the universal message of Judaism. On one level, it reflects an ancient polemic between Judaism and Christianity. In this story, the rabbis provided a Jewish theological response to Christmas. They argued that God did not have to send a savior to forgive us for Adam’s sin. God had forgiven us in Adam's lifetime–the sign of this is the winter solstice.
In addition, they gave the particularly Jewish holiday of Chanukah a grounding in the ancient history of all humanity. Chanukah was not only the holiday that celebrated Judah the Maccabee’s great victories and God’s care of the Jews during times of trouble. Chanukah is also a universal holiday. It is a celebration instituted by our common ancestor, Adam, as he rejoiced at the return of the sun and the recognition that he and his world were forgiven.
The rabbis of old found God’s love in all aspects of the world. Even the cold facts of the social sciences provided material for spiritual instruction. Even though they were not sociologists or anthropologists, as we know them, the rabbis did have good understanding of the world and the people in it. They were impressed by the fact at the very same time the Jews celebrated Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, the non-Jews too, were celebrating their festivals at the time of the winter solstice. They were not ashamed to claim that the Jewish festival and the pagan festivals were related. They understood that these festivals reflected the common human experience that dates as far back as. the first human, and that the time of the winter solstice is a time of rejoicing.
And, yet, even though Chanukah shares the same roots as. these others feasts, Chanukah has a special Jewish meaning. It is the holiday of commemorating the rededication of the Temple when people restored the light to the darkened sanctuary, the place where they sought God. It is the holiday instituted by Adam and celebrated until our very day, that celebrates God’s love for the world and us, symbolized by the light streaming down upon us from the sun, which was created for our good. We kindle the lights of Chanukah, not only to celebrate the miracle of the oil but to celebrate as well the miracle of creation.
© 1991 Lewis John Eron
All Rights Reserved