Hanukkah: a time to enjoy family, friends, songs, rich foods, parties, gifts, and games. To share story and history, to be both credulous and critical about the Maccabees and their legacy. To re-commit to overturning injustice and oppression.

Or maybe — if winter’s dark sucks the life from your mood — a time to get quiet and work at accepting yourself.

This is not a consolation prize, but a traditional interpretation of the holiday lights.

On the first day of creation, Torah says, God made light. Perhaps you  imagine a sky filled with the diffuse light of dawn, with the glow from a sun just beyond the horizon. But, Torah reminds us, there is no sky until the second day. And there is no sun, not until the fourth day.

What kind of light was created on the first day?

Not the kind generated physically from a star, fire, or bulb. Or that facilitates sight, showing us a physical world.

Perhaps a spiritual or an intellectual light, facilitating insight, making it possible to “see” God’s divine plan.

Yes, says the Midrash, that’s exactly what it was. Over time God sadly realized that few humans care about such insight. So God hid that subtle light, saving it for the righteous as they explored the “world to come” (Talmud Chagigah 12b).

Surely, say later interpreters, God overstated the case. Most people can handle a little bit of insight. Maybe God hid the light where it can be discovered bit by bit.

In the Torah, perhaps; in the white fire peeking out between the letters. Where anyone dedicated enough to “read between the lines” can see it.

And in the lights of the Chanukah candles, of course. In a thirty-minute glow, on eight dark days. Anyone who “reads between the lines” of the party can see it.

Spring’s long social days are gone. Summer’s festival-filled streets are quiet. Fall’s busyness is winding down. Winter’s short days send us inside — physically and spiritually.

Some people avoid an inner look, filling their home with sounds, smells, tastes and guests. Each night, they light an additional candle, adding to their festive joy.

Others, overwhelmed, avoid the crowds. For them, the candles have a special message. “Don’t worry if you’re low in winter! It is the inward season. Reflect our light; reflect on yourself.”

Each night, these inner travellers light an additional candle, adding to their insight. Through their self-acceptance, a bit of creation’s hidden light is revealed.

Photo: Laura Duhan Kaplan