Our neighbors, who are Jewish, observe a feast called Hanukkah at about the same time we celebrate Christmas. Is there any connection between the two festivals?
There is actually no similarity between our feast of Christmas and the Jewish feast of Hanukkah, even though they occur coincidentally around the same time of year. The date of the celebration of Hanukkah is not determined by its closeness to Christmas; in fact, its date is not reckoned according to the Gregorian calendar at all. Hanukkah is celebrated on "the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, that is, the month of Chislev" (1 Maccabees 4:52) as determined by the Jewish calendar (November/December in our calendar). Thus the proximity of Hanukkah and Christmas is accidental.
The meaning and the spirit of Hanukkah is quite different from that of Christmas. Hanukkah, or the Feast of the Dedication, commemorates the Jewish victory in 165 BC over the Syrians, who had tried for years to force the Jews to abandon their own way of life and adopt Greek religion and culture. In the course of this persecution, the Temple in Jerusalem had been desecrated with pagan worship.
Judas Maccabeus led the fierce and ultimately successful resistance to the attempted suppression of Judaism; and the ceremony of the rededication and consecration of the Temple (cf., 1 Maccabees 4:52-59) was the institution of the Feast of Hanukkah, in Hebrew, Dedication.
According to legend, the Jews had found only enough consecrated oil for the ceremony to keep the Eternal Light burning for one day.
Miraculously, the one-day supply of oil lasted for eight days, after which a fresh supply of oil was obtained. This tradition is reflected in the central ceremony of the Hanukkah celebration: the lighting of the menorah, or eight-branched candelabrum, kindling one light on the first night of the feast, two on the second, and so on until all the candles are lot on the eighth and last day of the feast. (A ninth candle, called the shammash, is used to light the other candles each night.) This ceremony gives Hanukkah its alternate name, Feast of Lights.