Christopher Hitchens deconstruction of Hanukkah misses the point as usual. If we only celebrated holidays where the underlying historical reality was free of complexity, irony, and moral ambiguity, we would have no holidays at all. Hitchens apparently holds up for scorn any tradition, such as Hanukkah, that simplifies and reduces historical events to simple allegories that reinforce a sense of national and religious identity.

The worthiness of Hanukkah does not rest on whether a "puddle" of oil lasting eight days instead of merely one constitutes a sufficiently impressive miracle, nor does its value wither away because the Hasmonean Dynasty that followed the Maccabean Revolt was arguably as rotten or worse than what the Jews had overthrown.

No, the essential point of Hanukkah --- whether the history fully supports this notion or not --- is that religious liberty and self-government and values worth fighting for, and that Jewish tradition is worth preserving in the face of forced conversion and assimilation to Hellenic paganism. Having the Temple in Jerusalem used for the worship of Zeus and the sacrifice of pigs is not something the zealots could or should have tolerated, nor should they have accepted conversion at the point of a sword. Once again, the Jews were faced with either physical or spiritual death, and instead chose to continue to exist, which is extremely galling to some people, including apparently Mr. Hitchens.