What Does Chanukah Mean to Me

I grew up in a household where my parents were silent about their heritage. My father was Cherokee and my mother's grandmother was Jewish. My father knew about his heritage but chose to be silent about it. He refused to ever discuss it with me, although we practiced some of his heritage, in primitive camping and bareback riding, and his father had traveling zoos and a snake exhibit.

I don't think my mother knew about the Jewish family line. But her uncle knew about it because he was the family genealogist and I have followed in his footsteps. But we did follow one of the Jewish traditions. We didn't open our stocking gifts on Christmas. We opened them one at a time for a week before Christmas. We have followed that tradition in our family plus, we've added some other practices.

My husband's grandfather was also Jewish and he refused to ever speak about it. We have since found that we both had family in the holocaust and some of them didn't come out of it alive.

My husband and I were both born and raised in Christian families, so we decided to combine our heritages. We celebrate Passover and Easter. We celebrate the High Holy Days and we celebrate Chanukah and Christmas. I usually spend Purim with a friend in Antwerp who lives in the Jewish Quarter. So I get to see some of their
celebration.

Chanukah was a time in our people's history when we were in dire straits. From what I remember, we were being occupied by a hostile people and our place of worship, our temple had been contaminated and rendered unclean by these conquerers. A family by the name of Maccabee was able to successfully cause an uprising which pushed the enemy out of Israel and out of the temple. The priests went in to clean the temple, to cause it to be rededicated and holy unto our God. However, they needed to make the special oil for the lamp-stand that required eight days to be made. At the same time the lamp needed to be lit. they only had enough oil for one day. But they lit the lamp-stand anyway, which burned for eight days until the fresh oil was ready.

This holiday is called the festival of lights. As Christian Jewish believers, we see this time as a special time which represents several things, two of which are:

1-It represents the miracles that God is waiting and willing to do on the part of His people, to save us and to keep us from harm.

2-It represents the coming of Messiah, and we believe, Jesus, who has come as the eternal light of the world that all may see Him and choose whether to believe in Him or not.

We have several traditions which we enjoy doing every year. We celebrate with a special meal of sauerbraten, latkes with baked applesauce and sour cream, possibly a cucumber salad and Christmas cookies or brownies. We have both a menorah and a chanukiah. The chanukiah has eight lamp-stands plus the helper candle in memory of took place, whereas the menorah has six lamp-stands plus the helper candle as did the original menorah in the temple. We light a candle in the chanukiah starting on Erev Chanukah, or Chanukah eve and for every night for eight. We pray over the lighting. We also open a stocking gift every night for the eight nights.

Then we set up the tree, decorate the house for Christmas and celebrate Christmas quite possibly three or four separate times since we have a dinner with my cousin and then later possibly with her husband, then with our kids and then our own private celebration.