Growing up in the suburbs of Kansas City in the 1960s, I remember very clearly when December rolled around. In first grade, I participated in my first Christmas pageant. We sat on stage with all the other students, singing Christmas carols. But when we came to the parts of the song when Jesus’s name, or Christ was mentioned, I closed my mouth. No one every seemed to care or notice. But as a Jewish child, the name Jesus Christ suddenly turned a fun song into a prayer, and somehow threatened my own sense of who I was.

For many years, the classes held Christmas parties, and the Jewish kids would often bring a Hanukkah menorah or explain how to play the dreidl game. By the time I entered Junior High School in seventh grade, I had a strong sense of myself as a Jew. Though I knew a few other Jews in the school, it was still a predominantly Christian student body. Seeing the Christmas tree at school every day, I could not keep silent about my discomfort. I protested the presence of a religious object in our school. I did not ask for “equal time” for a Hanukkah menorah. Although I loved being invited over to friends’ homes to sing carols and decorate their trees, I could not accept the tree on the grounds that the school belonged to all students and faculty, not only those who celebrated Christmas.

By that time, I had also learned that Hanukkah was not nearly the grand celebration that Christmas was, and that didn’t bother me. Although my own family was not exceptionally observant, we did enjoy the full cycle of Jewish holidays year-round, and gathered around the dinner table every Friday night to light Shabbat candles and sing blessings. Hanukkah for us was certainly a time for joy--we received gifts from each member of the family and we sang around the piano every night. But Christmas belonged to our Christian friends, and we did not suffer without it.

I have since learned a great deal about Hanukkah, and continue to enjoy it with our children as we did when I was growing up. We give a few presents, no more than one from each family member, including grandparents and aunts and uncles who send a box via Amazon.com to let us know they are thinking of us. We light many many candles--on four hanukkiot-menorahs, one for each of us. We still sing around the piano. At least one night we eat latkes. And sometimes we play dreidl.

But these are all artifacts, trappings of the holiday as celebrated in different places and times, and tailored for children and their understanding of ritual. Most important, I have learned three lessons about what Hanukkah is, and what it isn’t.

1. Hanukkah reminds us to publicize the miracles of our lives, not the least of which is the Jewish people’s ability to survive the ravages of history.
The story of Hanukkah really begins with Alexander the Great, whose empire transformed the world from Gaul to India, bringing the glories of Hellenistic culture to disparate ethnic groups. Alexander is a beloved figure in Jewish tradition (many boys were given his name in tribute) because he did not impose his culture, and granted self-rule to his colonies. Greek culture became intertwined with Jewish culture, opening us up to Greek philosophy and aesthetics.

But, as the Book of Maccabees relates, after Alexander’s death, his successors were not so generous. It is in that context that Antiochus Epiphanes, a Greek ruler of the Seleucid kingdom, based in Syria, overtook the land of Judea and imposed idol-worship on the Jewish people. Antiochus allied himself with the Jews who enjoyed Hellenistic culture and civil war erupted. A small band of guerilla fighters outside of Jerusalem fought back against Antiochus and everything he represented, and managed to defeat the foreign armies after months of warfare.

This event was, in itself, considered a miracle. Every day of Hanukkah, we add to the liturgy a prayer of thanksgiving: “for the miracles, for the redemption, for the heroic acts, for saving deeds, for consolations, all of which You have enacted for our ancestors at this time of year in days gone by--as in the days of Mattathias, son of Yohanan, Hasmonean High Priest, and Mattathias’ sons…You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked to the power of the just, the vicious to the power of those immersed in your Torah….Then your children came into your Temple’s inner room, cleared your sanctuary, purified your holy place, kindled lights inside your holy courtyards, and established these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise to your great name.”

The lights of Hanukkah have many interpretations, but the obligation that every Jew should light the candles of the Hanukkah menorah, and place those lights in the windows (or in some communities where it is safe enough, to actually place them outdoors), is simply this: to publicize the miracle. By lighting the lights we proclaim: a Jewish family lives here, and we are witnesses to the miracle of our very existence.

2. Hanukkah is a celebration of being a different and distinct minority
I learned from Rabbi Joseph Weizenbaum that one major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that “Christianity is a faith in search of a community and Judaism is a community in search of a faith.” No matter where we live, what language we speak, what foods we call “traditional,” Jews feel connected to one another as a people. Some of us attend temple regularly, but a lot of us do not. Some of us express our Judaism through social justice, others through Yiddish language and literature, still others through activism on behalf of the State of Israel. We cherish our ties to one another despite our differences.

In Tel Aviv, there is a Museum called Bet Hatefutsot, the Diaspora Museum. Before one enters the galleries to learn about the history of the Jews in all the lands of the world, one passes by a floor-to-ceiling slide show, photo images of many faces, each several feet high, ever-changing: old faces and young faces, men and women, dark-skinned and light-skinned, in modern dress and in long caftans, all Jewish. To enter that doorway gives us strength and inspiration when we return to our homes in West Roxbury or Kalamazoo or Berlin or Melbourne or Addis Ababa or Kyoto, where we are a distinct minority.

Of course, in America, we have been blessed with a kind of freedom and acceptance unrivaled in our history. But every Hanukkah, Jewish kids who have never been called an anti-semitic slur, never seen graffiti on their synagogue, never felt any different from the majority white culture, know that we are different. When we light our candles, we American Jews celebrate our freedom, and remember our own contemporary heroes, those who were willing to stand up and say, I’m different, I’m Jewish, like Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, Joe Lieberman.

Hanukkah reminds us that we Jews do not need to see ourselves as victims. Hanukkah reminds us to rededicate ourselves to those ideals, principles and practices that make us unique, even if they make us easy targets.

3. The lights of Hanukkah have common origins with other light holidays, and the metaphor of light is one we can share.
As I said, there are many interpretations of the Hanukkah lights. The rabbis, who developed Judaism after the Hebrew Scriptures ended, gave us the story of the oil that would not go out. But other rabbis gave us another story. “When Adam, the first man, saw that each week the day became shortened, he started to cry, saying, “Woe is me, perhaps this is because of my disobedience that the world becomes dark and it might yet return to chaos and ruin. And this must be the punishment of death that was decreed from Heaven.” He sat fasting and praying for eight days. Afterward, when he lived to see the solstice, he noticed that the days became longer, and understood that this is the cycle of the world. So he established eight days of celebration annually. These days that he celebrated each year corresponded to the eight days he had fasted. But while he established them to praise God, his descendants made them holidays of idol worship.

The rabbis of our tradition were aware of solstice celebrations and their impact well before the establishment of Christmas as a festival of light. Knowing they could not prevent their people from fearing the darkness and enjoying the holiday of lights, they acknowledged the universal origins but reminded us that our purpose, the Jewish character of this festival, is to use these lights in praise of God.

When our family lights the candles on our four different hanukkiot, we gather around and sing the blessings, and stand together, watching the candles and their reflection in the window. And then, we go outside, often in the cold, wintry air, and stare at the glow of candles as others see them. How bright and warm they are! How they light up the whole front of the house!

My hope is that others looking out their windows, or passing by on the street, stop as well, and they say, A Jewish family lives here! How miraculous! What a gift this light is to our world. That is what I hope you will say, the next time you see candles in the window.