greek

The holidays of light

 "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.”
Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, chapter1.

This is a very simple statement written by king Solomon, though extremely important to its era since the general perception back then and before, in the Pagan era, was completely different.

The ancient people were mainly scared of the possibility that the sun will go down and will never come back again after disappearing below the southern horizon. They were so scared that they created mythes and attached their local heroes to tell the stories in a dramatic way.

Mesopotamia
The Sumerian and Akkadians of Mesopotamia had a trinity of gods that influenced the Canaanites: Utu – Shamash, the god of the sun, Nanna – Sin, the god of the moon; and Inanna – Ishtar, the goddess of Venus. Shamash (the sun) was the son of Sin (the moon). Shamash, the Akkadians sun god, was assimilated by the Canaanites and fused with their own sun god, Ner. Both Shamash and Ner survive in the Jewish Hannukiah, whose candles are named after them.

In modern Hebrew the word Shamash means “servant” or “custodian”. This is because during the early Middle Ages, the ancient solar Feast of the Dedication (Hanukkah) of the Temple by the Maccabees in the second century B.C.E. The pagan Canaanites origins of the solar deity were suppressed, and the Shamash of the Hanukkah lamp was said to be there as a servant to light the other candles rather than to represent the god of sun.  Tammuz, the young Babylonian sun god was slay by a boar and went down to the bottom of earth.  

He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth,
And the dead are numerous in the land . . .
Men are filled with sorrow: they stagger by day in gloom .
In the month of thy year which brings not peace hast thou gone.
Thou hast gone on a journey that makes an end of thy people.  

Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of Venus and Heaven, loved Tammuz so much that she went down to the underworld to bring him back to light the world.

Greece
A different version in the Greek mythology to the fear of the sun disappearance:
Paethon was a young son of Helios, go of sun, who begged his father to let him drive the chariot of the sun. The Sun-god reluctantly conceded to the boy's wishes and handed him the reigns. However, the inexperienced Phaethon quickly lost control of the immortal steeds, and the sun-chariot veered out of control setting the earth aflame, scorching the plains of Africa to desert. Zeus was appalled by the destruction and struck the boy from the chariot with a thunderbolt, hurling his flaming body into the waters of the river Eridanos. His sisters, the Heliades, gathered on the banks, and in their mourning with transformed into amber-teared poplar trees.

These stories and others backed by enormous fear that humans always had, from any kind of end, brought hope and light to people's life in the midst of the darkness. Note that the entire human population before the light bulb was invented was in a complete (almost) darkness during the nights, and moreover in the long winter nights. Add to that the inevitable natural correlation between darkness and depression , some thinking and artistic minds and you got a legend!

So, we can clearly say that the celebrations of the shortest day of the year is going back thousand of years, at least to the Babylonian and Greek eras.

Hanuka
By the latest Jewish tradition, there is a holiday which is called Hanuka. This holiday was established at 138 B.C.E and is celebrating the victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks, who controlled the country at that time. The holiday is celebrating the re operation of the temple that was out of order for 3 years and for being able to practice the Jewish tradition as is and not as the new laws, which restricted any Jewish practices. In the ruins of the temple they found one jar with oil, which surprisingly gave enough oil to burn the Menorah for 8 days. This is the reason the Hanuka is being celebrated for 8 days.

It is very hard to ignore the fact that this holiday has been celebrated for many years before.
The main motif of the holiday is the triumph of the light upon the darkness, just like the Maccabees won and the oil jar lasted, which brings a notion of eternity to the light. The most important candle in the Hannukiah is the Shamash, which, as mentioned earlier, is actually the Babylonian god of the sun. The other 8 candles represent the sun, the moon and the 5 known planets that circulated the sun back then.

One of the basics of Hanuka is the agricultural aspect. In this time of the year, the longest nights, the olives are rape and can be gathered, hence, the most important product back then is abundant.

Hanuka used to be a moderate holiday until the establishment of the state of Israel. The Zionist educational institutes decided to emphasize the importance of the holiday and made it one of the most important holidays for the Jewish people today.
As said, the rebellion of the Jews against the Greek and the Jewish who became Greek in Jerusalem, was an active operation of the traditional Jewish people against an outside conquer and the assimilates.
Since the Jews in the Gola were taught that act like that of bringing the action into live and not relying only on god to change things is an action which is not supported and indeed was not supported around 2,000 years amongst the Jews all over the world. Hence, most of the importance of this holiday was with the miracle that happened with the oil jar, which is taken as god's action. Probably the national notion of the rebellion, meaning the fight against the conquers and the victory gave a back wind to the Zionists movement in the 20st century who needed some ethos and pathos to help and rebuild the country for the Jewish people as it was 2,000 years before.  

Chrismas
Christian ism - By the time the Christian belief was established around the ancient world, the Christians leaders wanted to change the rituals of the shortest day, as were celebrated all over, and for not confronting resistance, they reverted the celebrations of the rising sun to the birth of Christ. The followers held the belief that there was a strong correlation between the rebirth of the sun and the birth of Jesus. On the 21st of June, the longest day of the year, one will find the birth date of John the Baptist, which his role was to baptize Jesus and was #2 after Jesus. On top of that, the day the angel Gabriel announced to Miriam that she has a child in her womb was the time of the year when the day and night are equal in length. This is the beginning of the spring and sign for growing and opening, which is the same as pregnancy. After 9 months, on the end of December new leader came out to the world.

One can find entire history written by the astronomy and the starts. And as the Christian church emphasizes, after a complete week that all the world's forces (all religions and beliefs), are fighting the darkness and bringing the light, each in its own way, then, Jesus is the one that his light is growing and lighting the road to the entire universe.
So, as Yigal Pat, from the Israeli space center in Givatayim, says: “if you thought that only marketing on the radio is working, you can be sure its not, because more than 1,500 years ago there was someone to think of mass marketing”.
 
 "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” 

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Souces:
http://www.theoi.com
http://www.sacred-texts.com
http://www.mechon-mamre.org
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.biblegateway.com
A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews By Avner Falk