This year the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem runs from Sunset, 6 December to nightfall, 14 December during the Christian Advent Season. Its Biblical basis may be found at the following:
1st Maccabees 4:36-61
2nd Maccabees 10:1-9
John 10:22
The short story is this. Centuries before Christ's birth the Empire of Alexander the Great had broken apart into four or five separate parts. This can be read in the Old Testament books of Daniel (later half), and 1st and 2nd Maccabees. The greater of these was the Ptolemy Empire in Egypt and the Seleucid Empire in Syria. The Seleucids had conquered much of Israel and Judah. They were forcing their pagan Greek culture on the Jewish people, requiring sacrifice to Zeus Olympus, the eating of pork, the foregoing or reversal of circumcision, and all that the Mosaic Law required. This was not, however, simply a matter of clashing cultures between so-called enlightened Greeks and Jewish religious zealots. The Seleucids were cruel and abusive people. For example, when Jewish mothers had their male babies circumcised, the Seleucids would murder the infant, and with rope tie the dead infant around the mother's neck, strangulating her to death. Additional examples include where 2nd Maccabees records that the Greek pagans beat to death a scribe of old age, Eleazar, for refusing to eat pork, and burned alive a mother and her seven sons also for refusing to eat pork (the Mosaic Law forbade the consumption of pork because swine were regarded as unclean animals).
A man by the name of Matthias and his sons then rose up to challenge the Seleucid overlords. When he died he had placed his son Judas Maccabeus in charge of the freedom fighters. There were many battles where the Jewish contingent was outnumbered, but God always gave them the victory over the pagan Greeks. In the battle of 1st Maccabees chapter 4 Judas and his followers defeated Lysias, one the Generals of evil Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes. After Lysias retreated to Antioch, Judas and his contingent went to restore the violated Temple in Jerusalem where the Seleucid Emperor had sacrificed to Zeus Olympus a swine on the altar in the Holy of Holies. Our Jewish heroes thus found devastation and ruin everywhere. But while they had rent their clothes and pleaded for God's mercy and forgiveness, they persevered in restoring the Temple, and made a rededication. They found according to the Babylonian Talmudic a jar of oil for fueling a lit Menorah that had not been made unclean by the pagans. But the amount of oil was only sufficient for one day. Yet when used the Menorah continued burning for a full eight days. Thus, starting on 25 Chislev (approxinately 25 December, though the Jewish date varies with the Jewish calendar that is based on the lunar vice solar cycle), the Feast of Dedication was instituted for eight days in perpetuity to commemorate the restoration of the Temple from the pagans. This was the same feast for which Jesus in John 10:22 had returned to Jerusalem almost two centuries later.
Now some things are important here. The Temple was restored from pagan uncleanliness to holiness on or about 25 December. In the same way the Christ child came into the world to restore mankind from uncleanliness to holiness on 25 December (at least that's when we celebrate his birth, though the actual birth date is likely in springtime). It was the Temple of the Most High God which was cleaned out and rededicated, and St Paul in the New Testament calls our bodies the Temple of the Holy Spirit which we likewise are to keep clean and un-defiled. The celebration that the Jews made at the rededication of the Temple was much like the celebration that they would make much later when Christ Himself would come riding on an ass into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the oil that did not run out for eight days at the first Hanukkah is reminiscent of the Holy Spirit whom we receive at the Sacrament of Confirmation by anointing with oil, and who heals us on the anointing of oil at the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.
There are many allusions to Christ in the Old Testament. This is but one example. Here an ostensible Jewish Holy Day celebrated in parallel with the Christian Christmas point to that very event of the birth of the Christ child. Unfortunately, the Books of the Bible which talk about this particular Holy Day are missing from the Protestant Bible because in their rebellion against the Church in the 16th century AD, Martin Luther and John Calvin removed them on their own recognizance.
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