The Most Wonderful Time…

so as chanukah winds down i thought id address something that bothers me just a lil bit:

“chrismukkah”

[sigh]

yeh, i get it. why have two separate consumeristic commercialized juggernauts when you can combine them not unlike the voltron/captain planet/power ranger cartoons of yore?

well, see…cuz these two dont exactly play nice together. and im not just talking about the fact that one celebrates the miracle of overthrowing the greek attempt to supplant judaism versus a commeration
of the birth of the dude who sparked a religion which attempt[ed]/[s]…
to supplant judaism…which is oxymoronic enough in itself. no, im
talking about the fact that one is kinda sorta directly responsible for
the other, in a not happy fun kinda way.

so we all know the chanukah story bit, right? mattathias and his sons judah, jonathan, simon, eliezer, and, um, john. [john? really? that’s like “bob the maccabee”.] anyhoo, they kick out the greeks, restore the
temple, find some energy save oil and yay judaism!..but then AFTER that?
well, jonathan becomes high priest, which upsets the usual priestly
family and their followers. also, these followers have decided that
judaism has gotten a bit too lax, so they develop this system of strict
purity rules and abandon the lunar calendar for the solar one. they try
to convince jonathan to follow and promote this new version of judaism
to which he says no and pretty much decalres war on them and their
leader, the mysterious “teacher of righteousness”.

long story short, this little sect group decide to go off to themselves and follow this “new covenant” they’ve created and when their leader the “teacher of righteousness” dies, they begin to preach that
he will come back from the dead to finish his work and shortly after
that the world ends.

sound like anyone we know? yep. except this is a good 150 or so yrs before our good buddy jc even comes on the scene. interestingly enough though, his parents [as well as that john the baptist dude] were
all a part of this little sect, usually known as the “essenses”.
apparently once j comes around, everyone realizes this whole “teacher of
righteousness” deal isnt going anywhere so they decide to just
repackage it, superimpose evrything from the “teacher of righteousness”
[new covenant, resurrection, and all] and just dump it on him.

[and on a random sidenote: the weird solar/lunar calendar switch explains some of the loopy things in the new testament timelines. [yes the “last supper” was a seder service. no, it didnt take place
during pesach, seeing as how ppl were laying down palm branches, which
means it was actually around sukkot] b/c as we all know solar and lunar
dates rarely meet up exactly. and especially not after 150 years.]

so essentially chanukah is the jewish celebration of the beginning of the chain of events which leads to the birth of a religion that’ll spend a good 2000 years persecuting them, the savior of which is “born”
on xmas. [even tho he was really born in the spring.] celebrating them
together makes as much sense as celebrating “batmanjoker day.” or some
real world equivalent that makes more sense.

anyway, chag chanukah sameach