Monday 7th December 2020: Reflection: Peter Wilkinson

 

Advent, as we know, means ‘coming’ and is a time of preparation while we wait to commemorate the coming of Jesus into our world.

And aren’t we having to do quite a lot of waiting these days; ‘waiting for things to get back to normal’, (whatever that means), waiting for an end to the scourge of the virus, waiting for the ‘NHS Test and Trace’ system actually to work: maybe we’ll all have been vaccinated by the time that happens.

So we welcome the Advent candles to light our way as they are lit one by one towards the beautiful Feast of Christmas. 

There’s nothing unusual about using lights to celebrate, of course, our Jewish cousins will soon be doing so in their Festival of Lights, which they call Hanukkah. (There are, incidentally, no fewer than 16 ways of spelling Hanukkah in English so no need to get your dictionary out to check me up if you’ve seen it spelled ,Ch ...’ for instance.)

In Hebrew, the word means ‘dedication’ and it describes an annual eight day celebration for reasons set out below.

It centres on the history of the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Jewish religious practices had been outlawed in the Land of Israel when it was under the rule of a pagan Greek/Syrian king. This led to a revolt and the Temple was eventually retaken by the Maccabees, a group of Jewish warriors in the 2nd century BC, who cleared it of all pagan idols and rebuilt the altar.

Hanukkah, which marks the celebration of this event, starts on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. This year, it starts in the evening of 10th December and so during our time of Advent.

There is a story that those who were at the rededication believed they had witnessed a miracle when there was only a small amount of untainted oil for the menorah, just enough, they thought, for one day, yet it burned not for one day, but for eight.

Although it is one of the three biggest Jewish festivals of the year, for some strange reason, it is not mentioned in the Hebrew bible, instead being detailed in writings known as the Apocrypha.

Unlike Christians, whose religious celebrations take place mainly in church, Jewish ones are more often at home in family groups, this one starting with lighting just one candle on a special 8 candle menorah known as a Hannukiah.

On the first night of the holiday, a single candle is lit and a blessing is said.

On the second night, the first candle, having been allowed to burn out, is replaced by a fresh one and two candles are lit, and so on until the last night, when all eight are lit. There is a ninth candle in the middle of the Hannukiah called the shammash, which is used to light all the other candles.

 

The lit Hannukiah is often placed on a window sill or someplace visible to the public.

With children at its centre, there are other festive Hannukah traditions such as eating fried foods like latkes, (potato cakes),  a game of spinning ‘the dreidel’, which is a game that ‘invites inspiration from above’, and winning prizes such as chocolate coins called “gelt,” the Yiddish word for money, for the younger members of the family.

As we are told that Hannukah was instituted by Judas Maccabeus himself, shortly after the rededication, perhaps we might like to conjure up the image of Jesus and his family and friends joining in its celebration.

We wish our Jewish friends Happy Hannukah as they wish us Happy Christmas.

Oh! And as a footnote, you may like to know that Dr Jonathan Romain and Usman Bhally, respectively the Rabbi and the Imam of Maidenhead, exchange ......... Christmas Cards!

 Happy New Year! (It is the church’s New Year after all.)