What Is Hanukkah? Discovering the Story of the Maccabees

As we began learning about the biblical feasts, we often found ourselves looking at the Jewish calendar.

At first, it was practical. The Hebrew calendar is lunisolar, so its dates move in relation to the Gregorian calendar we used every day. We wanted to understand when Jewish communities observed each festival and how those dates connected with the passages we were studying.

That process also taught us to be careful with the phrase “correct biblical dates.” Jewish communities have preserved a shared calendar tradition, while other groups sometimes use different calendar interpretations. We were learners trying to understand, not authorities deciding the calendar for others.

Looking Beyond the Calendar

As we looked through the calendar, we noticed Jewish celebrations that are not among the appointed times listed in the Torah.

One of them was Hanukkah.

Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish festival remembering the struggle for Jewish religious freedom and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. Its name comes from a Hebrew word meaning “dedication.” It is not one of the festivals commanded in Leviticus 23, but it has been remembered within Jewish life for more than two thousand years.

That immediately made me curious. I had grown up in a Protestant church setting, yet I did not remember learning this story. Other Christian traditions, especially those whose Bibles include books of Maccabees, may encounter it more often.

I also noticed the Feast of Dedication in John 10:22, where Jesus is described as being in Jerusalem during the festival. The passage gives the setting for his words; it does not tell us every way he may have observed Hanukkah or establish a new Christian command to celebrate it.

So, naturally, I began researching.

Discovering the Maccabees

Hanukkah is connected to the Maccabean Revolt in the second century BCE. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of the Seleucid Empire, imposed policies that restricted Jewish religious practice and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem.

The resistance began with the priest Mattathias and his sons. Judah, later known as Judah Maccabee, became its best-known leader. What began as a local resistance gathered supporters and developed into a larger fighting force—not simply a few untrained people who remained small throughout the conflict.

After the rebels regained Jerusalem, they cleansed and rededicated the Temple around 164 BCE. First Maccabees describes an eight-day dedication, and Second Maccabees connects the celebration with a delayed observance patterned after Sukkot.

The familiar story of one day’s oil lasting for eight appears in later rabbinic tradition, especially the Babylonian Talmud, rather than in 1 or 2 Maccabees. Both strands became meaningful within Jewish remembrance: the ancient accounts emphasize resistance and rededication, while the rabbinic account emphasizes sacred light and divine provision.

As a Christian reader, I saw courage, perseverance, and devotion in the story. That was my faith response to what I was learning, not an attempt to redefine what Hanukkah means within Judaism.

A Story Preserved in Different Traditions

The story survives in ancient Jewish writings known as 1 and 2 Maccabees. These books are not part of the Jewish Tanakh. They are also outside the Protestant canon, although they have often been printed among the Apocrypha. Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions include books of Maccabees in their Scriptures, with some differences among their canons.

That helped me understand why I had not encountered the story often in my own Protestant upbringing while other Christians might know it well.

The sources are ancient historical and religious accounts, not neutral modern reports, and they sometimes emphasize different themes. Even so, they provide important evidence for the revolt, the Temple’s rededication, and the beginnings of Hanukkah. Later Jewish texts and practices show how the festival’s meaning continued to develop across generations.

Most importantly, Hanukkah is not an overlooked Christian holiday waiting to be reclaimed. It is a Jewish festival shaped by Jewish history, memory, worship, and resilience. Christians can learn from that story while honoring the people who have carried it.

For me, discovering Hanukkah opened new questions about history, Scripture, canon, and the traditions through which communities preserve memory. It also reminded me that learning respectfully sometimes begins by admitting how much we do not yet know.

What story has invited you to listen more carefully to the community that has preserved it?

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