Hello, podcast listeners. Today is the 25th, or Christmas Day, for those of you celebrating the birth of Christ. Happy Christmas.

Now, this Christmas happens to coincide with Hanukkah, which gives us a chance to revisit a segment we first aired a couple of Hanukas ago.

That is to say, on Judaism's eight-day festival of lights marking one of God's lesser miracles involving lamp oil and the perseverance of the Jewish faith.

Celebrated with draodles and minoras, lakas and jelly donuts, this relatively newish holiday serves, as Michael David Lucas described in the New York Times, as the, quote, Semitic sidekick to Christmas.

The Hanukkah story begins in Greek-controlled Palestine over 2,000 years ago,

where Jews enjoyed religious freedom,

until a new ruler, the Assyrian Greek king Antiochus, took power,

as memorialized in the much-beloved 1996 Rugrats

Hanukkah Special. From now on, King Antiochus says you have to wear what he wears and read what

he reads. You also have to worship his gods. Some people thought this new play of life was fine, but others didn't.

If that new king catches us with our old books, we're going to get in a lot of trouble.

I don't care.

These are the books our forefathers read and our five fathers and our six fathers, and I'm not stopping now.

Judah, or Yehuda, and his small band of followers, the Maccabees, defeated Antiochus.

After the war, under the command of Judah's priestly family, the Hussmonians,

the Jews found the Holy Temple of Jerusalem in ruins,

the temple lamp with just enough oil to burn for a single day.

But one day went by, and then another, and another, until finally the eight days had passed,

and the flame was still burning. And to this day, we light the menorah every year to remember the miracle of Hanukkah.

That's the popular Hanukkah narrative, passed down through cartoons and kindergarten classes,

wherever Jewish kids are at risk of feeling left out at Christmas.

But this holiday has a contentious past.

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