Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that is also known as the Festival of lights. Hanukkah is a Hebrew word meaning dedication. There are different spellings of the word: Chanukah, Hannukah, Hanukah, Chanuka, Chanukkah, Hanuka, Hanukkah, Hanukka, Hanaka, Haneka, Hanika, and Khanukkah. It is a holiday celebrated for eight nights and eight days. The first evening of Chanukah starts at sunset on the 24th day of Kislev, Kislev is the third month of the civil year and the ninth month of the religious year in the Jewish calendar and comes in either November or December.

The story of Hannukah is told in the Talmud, the records of the rabbis. Alexander the Great had conquered Syria, Egypt and Palestine in the early 330's BCE. He allowed the people in these lands to observe their own religions and to rule themselves. This didn't bother most of the Jews, but some Jews began to become like the Greeks and adopted their ways and beliefs in many gods. This upset the Jews who continued to believe in G-d and the Jewish way of worship.

Then in 180 BCE Antiochus IV became King and began to control the Jews. He slowly made laws that did not allow the Jews to practice their own religion. In 167 BCE he sent a priest to be in the Temple and ordered that an alter to Zeus be built in the Temple. Then he started to sacrifice pigs in the Temple which was blasphemous to the Jews because pigs were not considered kosher (holy) to the Jew. This defiled their Temple and began to worship Zeus and other Greek gods in the Temple.

The Jews began to rebel. In a small village near Jerusalem a Jewish High Priest named Mattathias killed a Greek officer when he was being forced to to eat pig. Mattathias' and his five sons, John, Simon, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Judah hid in the hills and other Jewish families went with them. Before Mattathias died in 166 BCE, he put his son, Judah Maccabee in charge of the little army that grew in those hills.

Even though Judah and his army were outnumbered by the Greek army they regained control of the Temple in 165 BCE on the 25th of Kislev. The Temple was in disarray and many things were broken or missing. This army cleaned the Temple and fixed as many things as they could. They discovered that the oil necessary to keep the menorah, a holy candelabra, burning through the night was very low, maybe enough for just one night. That little bit of oil lasted for eight days which gave the Jews time to find new oil.

Hannukah celebrates the miracle of the oil and not that the Jews won the war because they never celebrate war. Each day of the holiday Jews around the world light one more candle on the Hannukah menorah until all eight candles burn. In Israel it is not a major holiday. In countries where Christians celebrate Christmas Hanukkah becomes more important for the families of children so they can exchange gifts every day during the eight day holiday.