The occurrence of the festival when nights are longest has invited unimaginative speakers to think themselves poetic by comparing the physical darkness with various negative forces.
Jerusalem, December 22 - Sources with their ear to ground on developing societal trends offered reassurance this morning that, not to worry, because the current Jewish festival ends at nightfall this evening, the insipid invocations of "one small candle pushes away vast quantities of gloom" and other such glurge will similarly cease until around this time next year.
With Hanukkah drawing to a close Monday night, residents of and visitors to the Jewish State will be spared further overexposure to trite mentions of lighting candles to dispel spiritual darkness, of of rekindling hope amid despair, during a holiday that celebrates the reassertion of Jewish sovereignty in the Second Century BCE when a group of nationalist guerrillas wrested control of the land of Israel from the Seleucid Empire. Jews kindle candles or oil to mark the holiday, which also features celebration of the rededication of the Holy Temple that took place once the Maccabees secured Jerusalem.
The occurrence of the festival during the time of year when nights are longest has invited unimaginative speakers and writers to think themselves poetic by comparing the physical darkness with various negative forces, whether the historical oppression of the Hellenistic powers that be during the actual time of the Maccabees, to the bogeyman of the day, depending on who's speaking: racism, hate, poverty, illiteracy, climate change, or any number of real and imagined threats.
In fact, the most famous episode associated with Hanukkah, textual sources indicate - the miracle of uncontaminated oil sufficient for only one day's lighting in the liberated Temple but that lasted eight days, long enough to secure a new supply - appears centuries after the event would have taken place, with none of the contemporaneous sources mentioning it at all. Instead, the extrabiblical books of Maccabees attribute the eight days of the festival to an effort to make up for having missed the autumn-time harvest celebration of Sukkot, which lasts eight days. Ancient Jewish texts appear relatively free of the modern phenomenon of banishing the darkness of depression or intolerance or transphobia or New England Patriots fans.
Analysts cautioned that immediate relief from the hackneyed light-dark good-evil analogies will only affect people living in a Jewish-majority society or community; members of Christian communities, or anyone living in a society where Christianity still dominates the culture, will still be bombarded with winter-solstice-themed assurances for at least a few days more, but at least, unlike Hanukkah music, Christmas music has some artistic and melodic merit.
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