Hanukkah Blessings

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah. While I find it hard that any of you wouldn't know what Hannukah is, there's probably someone out there who didn't watch the Rugrats Hanukkah Special(or Lamb Chop's Hanukkah or whatever) as a kid and is pretty uninitiated to the Festival of Lights.

So here's the deal: Antiochus was a dick, looted the Temple of Jerusalem and outlawed Judaism. Because he wasn't feeling enough like a jerk-off, he built an altar to Zeus in the temple, banned circumcision and demanded pigs be sacrificed at the base of the Zeus altar.

Now obviously none of this sat well with the Jewish people and it led to wide-scale revolts and Matthias and his sons(Jochanan, Simeon, Eleazar, Jonathan, Judah, Greg, Peter and Bobby) led a rebellion against Antiochus. Matthias soon died and Judah took his place as leader of the rebellion(alongside Luke Skywalker) and in a fucking year, the revolt was a success.

Much like the end of "Return of the Jedi," there was a huge celebration(although there were significantly less Ewoks). Judah ordered the Temple of Jerusalem to be cleansed and to re-light the menorah(that candle thing in the picture above because if you don't know what Hanukkah is, you probably have no fuckin idea what a menorah is) which is supposed to burn throughout the night every night. HOWEVER, there was only enough olive oil to burn for a single night. Through some sort of miracle(as all these stories have one), it managed to burn for eight whole days which was exactly the right amount of time to make a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. What an interesting coincidence! Anyways, the sages(Princess Zelda, Rauru, Saria, Darunia, Princess Ruto, Impa and Nabooru) proclaimed there would be an eight-day festival in honor of the miracle.

So now we light candles for eight days and give each other shitty presents.

Also, Barenaked Ladies wrote a pretty good new Hanukkah song that incorporates the blessings you say as you light the candles each night. So that's fun.