Sir, - The article "Your Feast is my Fast", about what non-Christians do when all around them are celebrating the biggest religious festival of the year, was most fascinating (Features, December 14th).
It referred to the Jewish festival of Chanukah, which occurs around the same time as Christmas, and Joe Briscoe claims the lighting of candles at Christmas time derives from this.
The events Chanukah commemorates occurred in 164 BC, when a small band of Jewish warriors resisted Greek attempts to Hellenise the Jewish people and to have them worship the idol Jupiter.
The vastly outnumbered Jews successfully resisted this attempt to destroy Judaism and so protected Judaism for the future. If Judaism had been destroyed, Christianity and Islam would never have come into being. Perhaps, instead of Jews celebrating Christmas, Christians and Muslims should celebrate Chanukah in recognition of Israel's struggle against paganism which paved the path for the advent of Christianity and Islam. Most significantly at that time, the Jews were the only monotheists in the entire world.
Voltaire, the French Philosopher, stated: "If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious matters, it is clear that we all ought to become Jews, because Jesus was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew and said expressly that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion". Pere Hyacinthe, the founder of the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland, said: "It is an historic fact that he [Jesus] instituted no rite, no sacrament, no Church. Born a Jew, he wished to live and to die as a Jew and from the swaddling cloths of circumcision to the embalmed shroud of sepulchre he followed only the rites of his religion."
Jesus the Nazarene, endeavoured to bring a double kindness on the world. He supported the Law of Moses and he sought to perfect society and its populations with ethical qualities. - Yours, etc., Stanley A. Siev,
Aungier Street, Dublin 2.