Festival of Lights–whole world

It is December 25th which is the traditional day to celebrate Christmas; however, I thought that this year we would spend some time to learn more about the “Festival of Lights.” What most people don’t know is that this general description covers many festivals around the world.

In the Jewish tradition, according to Wikipedia, the celebration of Hanukkah was called “Festival of Lights” and dates back to Judas Maccabeus who ordered eight-day festivities. Here is the account of Titus Flavius Josephus in his book, Jewish Antiquities XII:

“Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon; but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honored God, and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when, after a long time of intermission, they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights.”

Christians keep a “Festival of Lights” that is based upon the birth of Jesus and the stars in the sky that announced his coming and led the three wise men to his manger. Christmas celebrations have been widened to include pre-Christian, Christian and secular themes and origins according to Wikipedia. The colors of Christmas are red, green and gold. Red symbolizes Jesus’ blood, shed in his crucifixion; green symbolizes eternal life; gold captures the three gifts of the Magi.

Green was memorialized through the evergreen tree that stayed green all year long and never turned brown or lost its leaves; and the Christmas tree was first used by the German Lutherans in the 16th Century. Thus, people have come to have lights on a tree, just as the Jews light candles and put them in a menorah, which symbolizes the purification of the Temple and the miracle of wicks of the menorah burning for eight days, even though the oil appeared to be sufficient to last only one day.

As we move East, we find a number of festivals associated with lights.

Diwali, a festival associated with Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism, symbolizes the spiritual “victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.” There is also the Karthikai Deepam or Thrikarthika and Kartik Purnima. The celebration features lighting rows of oil lamps (Deepam) to honor six celestial nymphs who were granted immortality as ever living stars in the sky. The six stars are also associated with the Pleiades in folklore and literature.

The Chinese celebrate the Lantern Festival or the Spring Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunisolar Chinese Calendar; it marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. The festival’s great significance can be dated back to the Western Han Dynasty (about 200 BC), a period similar to the purification of the Jewish Temple in 165 BC.

Finally, we have the Tazaungdaing Festival, also known as the Festival of Lights, and spelt Tazaungdine Festival. The festival may have stemmed from the pre-Buddhist period, when it was called the Kattika Festival.

Let’s put aside all of the religious origins of the “Festivals of Lights.” Let’s just take the concept of peace on earth, good will toward others and combine it with the spiritual concept that the celebration is all about the “victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.” If we can do that, we will have come up with a pretty good formula for living our daily lives.

However, it is also Important to keep in mind why today’s world is free to celebrate all of these “Festival of Lights.” In WWII, Americans fought alongside many people, from the Chinese to the Poles, in a joint effort to keep our freedoms. It is in this spirit that I dedicate some music and weave into the music a theme of gratitude toward the members of our armed forces.

In 1941, the Army created a band that is today honored as the United States Air Force Band. A friend of mine alerted me to the fact that since 2013 this band has been showing up unannounced in locations around Washington D.C. and giving short concerts. For lack of a better term, these are called Flash Mob concerts. I am going to feature three of these concerts and end the day with a WWII reminder forever captured by the great Marian Anderson.

Our first piece of music is the USAF concert from 2013, featuring Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” at the outset, with its wonderful theme being repeated by various instruments, starting with a single cello. At around the 4 minute mark, the music shifts into “Joy to the World.”