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Chanukah’s
Holiday And Tradition
By Alex
Padalka
Dr. maulana ron karenga founded kwanzaa in 1966. |
The word Chanukah
means “dedication” in Hebrew, and is one of the youngest
Jewish holidays. Chanukah celebrates religious dedication and the strong
Jewish spirit, and has a story of victory behind it.
In the second century, Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes attempted to
force his own Greek religion on the people of Judea. To their outrage,
Antiochus erected an altar of Zeus in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem and
sacrificed a pig on it. The Jewish people did not stand for this insult
and staged a successful rebellion led by Judah Maccabee. After the war
was over, the Maccabees cleansed the Temple and held a service of dedication,
marking the first Chanukah.
During the restoration, a miracle happened, according to the Talmud.
There was only enough oil found to last for one day, yet somehow the
temple Menorah stayed lit for eight.
The menorah
is a symbol of an 8-day miracle from the 2nd century. |
To commemorate the
miracle, Chanukah is celebrated for eight days, and gets its second
name, the Festival of Lights, from the practice of lighting the special
Chanukah Menorah, also called a Chanukkiah. As opposed to the seven
candles of the Temple Menorah, it has nine candles or oil lamps, one
of which stands out from the others, called the Shamash. The Shamash
is lit first and used to light the rest of the candles, one for each
day of the miracle. The menorah is displayed prominently in a window
or on a stoop, to remind passersby of the miracle.
Another symbol of Chanukah is the dreidl, the four-sided top with a
Hebrew letter on each side. The letters stand for the phrase Nes Gadol
Hayah Sham - “A great miracle happened there,” but they
also stand for instructions to a game. It is said that the dreidl was
used as a “teaching tool in disguise” when the Jewish people
were forbidden to teach their religion.
Chanukah is best known among American non-Jews because it often coincides
with the Christmas season (this year, Chanukah begins on the evening
of Dec. 7), but it is actually a relatively minor holiday. Unlike Passover
and Yom Kippur, which were Biblical holidays, which God gave to Moses
at Sinai, Chanukah is not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible.
It does appear in the New Testament (John 10:22), however, by which
time it became a regular holiday: “And it was at Jerusalem the
feast of the dedication, and it was winter.”
The
Kwanzaa Tradition
While
most families are putting their Chanukah and Christmas presents away,
some Queens families will be getting ready for their Kwanzaa celebration.
The
word Kwanzaa originates from the Kiswahili phrase “matunda ya
kwanza,” which means first fruits of the harvest. The term represents
the celebration of harvesting the first crops in traditional Africa.
Kwanzaa
is an Afro-centric centered institution that is celebrated by people
of African descent around the world. The celebration was created by
Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966 as a way for black people to reaffirm
their commitment to their heritage, themselves, their families and their
community.
There are seven days of Kwanzaa starting on Dec. 26 and continuing through
Jan. 1., and each day focuses on a specific principle.
The seven principles are known as the Nguzo Saba, and serve as a guide
for meditation and daily living. The greeting for each day is Habari
Gani, and the response
is the same phrase followed by the principle of the day.
There are also seven African symbols incorporated into the celebration.
The seven symbols are mazao (fruits, vegetables, and nuts), mkeba (place
mat, representing foundation, ancestors and cultural history as a people),
kinara (candleholder), vibunzi or muhindi (ears of corn, one for each
child in the family), zawadi (gifts, usually made or selected to represent
the principle of the day), Kikombe cha umoja (communal cup of unity)
and mishumaa saba (seven candles, one lit each day starting with the
black one in the center on Unity Day, the first red (which are all located
to the left) and rotating to the first green on the third day (which
are all located on the right) red, green, red, green. The candles are
incrementally lit, so on the day of Imani all seven candles are burning
uniformly.
The
Seven Principles
of Kwanzaa:
Umoja (Unity)
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and
race.
Kujichagulia
(Self-Determination)
To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak
for ourselves.
Ujima (Collective
Work and Responsibility)
To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s
and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
Ujamaa (Cooperative
Economics)
To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and
to profit from them together.
Nia (Purpose)
To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community
in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Kuumba (Creativity)
To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave
our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Imani (Faith)
To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers,
our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
The
Untold History of Christmas
By Alex padalka
The Christmas
holiday has gone through many incarnations over the last 4,000 years.Photo
by Ira Cohen |
The day the world
celebrates the birth of Christ was a matter of compromise - his precise
birth date has never been pinpointed, and estimates vary not by days
but by months. Christmas may have been celebrated as early as 98 A.D.,
but the date of record is 137 A.D., when the Bishop of Rome ordered
the birthday of Christ Child celebrated as a solemn feast. In 350 A.D.,
another Roman Bishop, Julius I, chose Dec. 25 as the observance of Christmas.
And then there was Santa Claus.
Granfather Frost, Babbo Natale, Kris Kringle, Shengdan Laoren and even
Black Peter are all incarnations of Santa Claus, celebrated around the
world as the giver of gifts on Christmas Eve. The jolly fat man in a
red suit is based on St. Nicholas, patron saint of children and sailors,
a generous Bishop born in Turkey who, as an orphan himself, had a special
soft spot for poor children. Legend has it that one night, a father
decided that to save two of his daughters he would have to sell the
third into slavery. St. Nicholas found out, snuck into the house and
dropped three bags of gold into the stockings drying on the chimney.
Nicholas died around 345 A.D. and became a popular saint throughout
the Christian world, with the date of his death, Dec. 6, celebrated
as St. Nicholas day. When saint worship was temporarily banned in the
seventh century, St. Nicholas became associated with Christmas. He wasn’t
always fat, by the way: a cartoonist for Harper’s magazine made
him so in the 1930s.
Encyclopedia Britannica describes Christmas this way: “The myth
of Mithra formed the origin of the cult of Mithraism, which flourished
in the Roman Empire and was for a time the chief rival of Christianity.
One of the most well known festivals of ancient Rome was the Saturnalia,
a winter festival celebrated from December 17-24. Because it was a time
of wild merry making and domestic celebrations, businesses, schools
and law Courts were closed so that the public could feast, dance, gamble,
and generally enjoy itself to the fullest.” Dec. 24 was the birthday
of Mithra, the Iranian god of light. The day after the Saturnalia, was
adopted by the church as Christmas, the nativity of Christ, to counteract
the effects of these festivals, according to the Encyclopedia.
It is commonly accepted that Christmas was not a holiday originated
by the Christians, but rather an adoption and integration of European
pagan festivals surrounding the winter solstice - “the return
of the sun,” and the shortest day of the year. Even conservative
Christians doubt that Christ was born in December, since on that day
shepherds were “abiding in the field, keeping watch over their
flocks by night” (Lk. 2:8) - hardly something to be done on a
winter night in Israel. In fact, modern Christmas traditions date back
to long before the birth of Christ, and some can be traced as far back
as 4,000 years to the early Mesopotamians.
12 Days of Christmas: The Mesopotamians held a 12-day-long festival
for their god Marduk to do battle with the monsters of chaos. The Mesopotamian
king was supposed to die at the end of the year to return with Marduk
to battle, but out of cowardice the kings would choose a criminal to
be king for the duration of the festival, given all the respects and
privileges of a real one. At the end of 12 days, the fake king was stripped
and killed.
The Yule Log and Tree Decorations: In Scandinavia, the sun disappeared
for many days, and scouts would be sent out to the mountaintops to search
for it. They returned with the first light and the village held a great
festival called the Yuletide, with a feast around a fire burning with
the Yule log for 12 days. In some areas people tied apples to branches
of trees to remind themselves that spring was on the way.
The Saturnalia Connection: The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, for the
god Saturn, around Dec. 17 to 24. The celebration included decorating
halls with garlands and green trees lit with candles, masquerade parties,
big feasts and exchange of good luck gifts, as well as cross dressing
and a game in which the masters switched place with slaves, and the
masters had to obey.
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