14 December—Chanukah, usually transliterated into English (with Roman letters) as Hanukkah, starts tonight. Wow. So here’s an informal lesson about the eight-day Jewish holiday. First, even though it’s usually spelled with an H rather than a Ch, Chanukah is supposed to be pronounced with the Ch. But not as in chump change. Rather, it’s a voiceless pharyngeal fricative—a guttural, throat-clearing sound—like you’re getting ready to spit. Same goes for the Ch in Chabad, for instance, or achtung, or bricht moonlicht nicht. (Sometimes the sound is represented by an h with a dot under it, but nobody knows what that means.)

Next, Jews didn’t come up with Chanukah to compete with Christmas. In fact, Chanukah, which means dedication in Hebrew, was first observed 163 years before Jesus was born to commemorate the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem the previous year. No, Jesus wasn’t born to commemorate the rededication of the Second Temple; that’s just an accident of sloppy syntax. And the Second Temple was to be destroyed by the Romans 37 years after they killed Jesus.

It’s merely coincidental that gifts are a big part of both Chanukah and Christmas. The most popular Chanukah gift is gelt—money. Of course. Money would also be the most popular Christmas gift if people weren’t so intimidated by appearances. Mallard Filmore put it this way a couple of days ago in Mallard’s holiday gift idea #73: “Giving cash can seem lazy and impersonal. So instead, buy a random gift, return it, then give them the receipt along with the refund. Now your cash gift has some effort behind it. Plus, you’re saving them the trouble of returning it themselves.”

Like Christmas, Chanukah is supposed to be religious. Because the rededication of the Second Temple involved what’s regarded as a miracle. Well, there were two miracles, the first being the small Jewish army’s victory over the considerably larger Syrian-Greek horde, which had committed all manner of antisemitic atrocities including defiling and desecrating the temple.

The main miracle of Chanukah, though, the one that’s celebrated by eating heavy oily foods and lighting candles, is the miracle of the oil. It was olive oil, of course, and it was supposed to be pure because it was used as holy fuel to keep the seven-branched menorah going as part of cleansing, renovating, and rededicating the temple. That said, it’s not known whether the olive oil was extra-virgin, cold-pressed, or first pressing. But the menorah protocol went all the way back to Moses.

Anyway, the problem was that there was allegedly only enough olive oil to keep the menorah going for a day. But the miracle is that that little bit of oil burned for eight whole days, thus allowing the Maccabees, Cohens, Levys, or whomever to find more. The Maccabees were the militia, by the way; the Cohens—kohanim—were the priests; the Levys—levites—were the Cohens’ assistants (and likely were tasked with finding the olive oil—or pressing it). And Chanukah menorahs have eight branches because of those eight days. Plus the ninth to hold the shammes candle, the one that lights all the others.

But the miracle of the oil? Jews for the most part don’t subscribe to genuine alleged miracles like virgin birth or resurrection. So why not give them the miracle of the oil? Assuming Sustainable Jerusalem wasn’t around to ration out the oil to save the planet, no doubt a devil’s advocate would determine that there had in fact been enough oil all along, or maybe a levite surreptitiously fiddled with the wick to reduce the flame.

And in all events we don’t know for sure that anybody actually saw the flame burning for eight days . . .