Chanukah

[liv]

I have ideological issues with Chanukah. But this evening, I came home from work, and was so dead tired that I fell straight to sleep (this was the middle of the afternoon!) And I woke up and it was cold and dark, but there was my chanukah present from lethargic_man. All of a sudden, I felt far away from my family and my people, and I had a strong impulse to go out to the corner shop and buy nightlights with which I improvised a chanukah lamp.

Then I sat down and wrote a highly enthusiastic review of The Player of Games.

To those who care about such things, happy chanukah.

Comments

[liv]

the custom of instigating national festivals to celebrate military victories is definitely Greek and foreign

Is it? What about Purim?
That's sort of a good counterexample, actually. I was going to say that the difference is that Esther is a prophet(ess) whereas Judah the Maccabee most certainly isn't, and indeed lived after the end of the age of prophecy. But of course there's no internal evidence to that effect, being as how the strange thing about Esther is its failure to mention God at all.

I wonder when the earliest mention of Purim outside the (dubiously-dated) Book of Esther is.
To an extent it doesn't matter when Esther dates from; clearly it was well established in canon by the time we get any kind of she be'al peh at all. And most probably before the time of the Maccabees. So you're not going to be able to find any discussion of Purim as a new festival in the way you get with Chanukah.