Our Jewish Roots

We Christians sometimes soft pedal our Jewish roots.  Take Christmas for instance.  I have heard that we chose December 25 because the pagans had a feast for the winter solstice that came around that time.  Darkness was beginning to turn into light.  Well, there is more to our Christmas roots than that.  When the Israelites, the Maccabees, defeated the Greek nonbelievers, some hundred plus years before Jesus, the Maccabees reconsecrated the temple and burnt candles for eight day in joyful celebration of victory.  They did it from the twenty fifth day of the ninth month, Chislev.  Since the year began with March back then, Chislev would turn out to be our December.  Their feast became Hanakkah and ours became Christmas, which we celebrate with an eight day octave.  Thank you my Jewish friends for the roots of a really good idea.  Now if we could only get some spirituality back into our religion at Christmas.