Hanukkah and Other Holidays

There is a certain crowd who creates unnecessary conflict within the body of Christ. You can find their positions all over social media, YouTube, and sometimes even on TV. In this article, we will call them the “Anti-Holiday” crowd.

If you’ve ever heard someone claim that Christians should never celebrate any holiday, you have encountered an Anti-Holiday Christian. There is a passage in scripture you can give people like this to help inform them on the subject. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before Jesus was born, around 164 B.C., the Jews cleansed the temple they had recently reclaimed from the madman Antiochus the fourth (the nickname given to him by the Jews, “Antiochus Epimanes,” means, “Antiochus the Mad” or “Antiochus the Madman; a way of mocking the name he preferred, “Antiochus Epiphanes,” which means, “Antiochus, god manifest.”). Antiochus had desecrated the temple with many wicked actions including sacrificing pigs in it (an unclean animal under the Old Covenant). The Jews cleansed the temple and rededicated it to the Lord. When it came time to light the menorah (Candleabrum), they could find only a small jar of oil. Miraculously, the small amount of oil burned for eight days until a new supply of oil could be acquired. This amazing event in history is celebrated every year with the holiday known as Hanukkah.

So why am I going on about this? Well, the anti-holiday crowd will make allowance for the Jews in the Old Testament observing the feasts of Israel, but ​only ​because God commanded them specifically to observe these holidays. However, there is a problem that anti-holidayers have to deal with that undermines their position: Jesus seems to have observed Hanukkah. This is recorded in John chapter 10. I say, “seems to have observed,” because the scripture never says specifically that Jesus observed the holiday. However, Jesus was presumably at the temple for the feast of dedication (Hanukkah). Now, the anti-holiday crowd will take exception with this presumption. Nevertheless, this feast was happening at the temple when Jesus entered it, which would provide the perfect opportunity for Jesus to rebuke them for observing a holiday that God had not commanded them.

Observing any holiday, given that it is not inherently opposed to God and His commands, is a matter of one’s conscience, and thus is up to the individual believer. For more in-depth teachings on issues of the conscience, read the relevant scriptures on the subject such as Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8.

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