Faithful haunted by quest for meaning

People of all religions continue to seek their own understanding to Christmas.

How odd of God to choose the Jews.” It’s an old quip and a dodgy one but now as we head towards Christmas it’s a reminder of how steeped in Hebraic culture our civilisation is, despite the terrible things that have gone along with it. It’s also a question that arises with an impassioned poetic pessimism throughout the Hebrew Bible with all that talk of weeping by the rivers of Babylon at the remembrance of Zion. And then there’s that unbelieving question, early on in St John’s Gospel, that comes back at the questioner with all the power and glory in the world: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

As we anticipate Christmas with whatever degree of excitement or dread, it’s worth remembering too the Jewish feast of Hanukkah, which takes its bearings from an incident in the Book of Maccabees — that late Old Testament book technically part of the apocrypha but canonical to Catholic and Orthodox Christians andfull of rebellion and heroism — which involves oil and the lighting of the menorah.

It’s not a major day of remembrance in the Jewish calendar like Yom Kippur or Pesach, the Passover, but it grew in prominence especially in 19th-century America (but also in Western Europe so that the family of the father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was keen on it) at about the same time the figure of Saint Nicholas mutated into Santa Claus or Father Christmas with his reindeer and his sleigh and his excuse to lavish gifts on kids.

Read the article by Peter Craven in The Australian.