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Monday, December 17, 2007

[wvns] Hanukkah, Christmas & 'Id-ul-Adha

Hanukkah, Christmas, and `Idu-l-Adha
A Homily for the Season
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni @ aol.com)
Sun 12/16/07


On December. 3, 2007 Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish
backwardness. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine was published
to the Web. While Hitchens' ignorant religion-bashing, which includes
an attack on Christianity as well as Judaism, was probably fun to
write, the article neither increases mutual understanding among
believers and non-believers, nor does it explain the texts, nor does
it elucidate in any reasonable way the history and major spiritual
questions of the Greco-Roman period under question.*

Because he would rather pander his own prejudices than find the truth,
Hitchens accepts the traditional Rabbinic Jewish Hanukkah story at
face value instead of applying the sort of skepticism to which he
would subject an official report or press release from the Bush
administration.

The Talmud, the Megillat Antiochos, and the Greek deuterocanonicald
books of Maccabees contain somewhat different versions of the history
of the struggle between the Maccabean fighters and the Hellenistic
Syrians ruled by Antiochos IV Epiphanos. Even though the miracle of
the oil becomes central to the modern Jewish celebration of Hanukkah,
the books of the Maccabees do not even mention it.

The Greek texts are not centrally focused on demonstrating God's
ultimate power over nature or concern with the most minute aspect of
ritual purity down to the last drop of fuel for the candelabrum of the
Jerusalem Temple but rather aim at legitimization of the Hasmonean
dynasty that the Maccabees established.

The Jerusalem Temple Religion of the Hasmonean period, which is also
called Second Temple Judaism, was radically different from the
Rabbinic Judaism that crystallizes into its final form approximately
1000 years after the Maccabean revolt. Rabbinic Judaism is based on
the deterritorialized Talmudic framework that was developed after the
2nd century CE Bar Kochba rebellion and focuses on spiritual rather
than political power issues.

On the basis of unavoidably questionable Rabbinic Jewish understanding
of the historical events of the Maccabean rebellion, Hitchens
describes the current celebration of Hanukkah:

"And so we have a semiofficial celebration of Hanukkah, complete
with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the
imposition of theocratic darkness.."

Hitchens has inadvertently but possibly also somewhat maliciously
trivialized the complex national and international politics of
Hellenistic Judea of the 2nd century BCE.

Second Maccabees Chapter 1 describes the miracle that concerned the
author of the Greek text and thereby hints at the actual conflict that
underlay the rebellion.

18

Therefore whereas we purpose to keep the purification of the
temple on the five and twentieth day of the month of Casleu, we
thought it necessary to signify it to you: that you also may keep the
day of Scenopegia [Feast of Tabernacles], and the day of the fire,
that was given when Nehemias offered sacrifice, after the temple and
the altar was built.

19

For when our fathers were led in Persia, the priests that then
were worshippers of God took privately the fire from the altar, and
hid it in a valley where there was a deep pit without water, and there
they kept it safe,

20

But when many years had passed, and it pleased God that Nehemias
should be sent by the king of Persia, he sent some of the posterity of
those priests that had hid it, to seek for the fire: and as they told
us, they found no fire, but thick water.

21

Then he bade them draw it up, and bring it to him: and the priest
Nehemias commanded the sacrifices that were laid on, to be sprinkled
with the same water, both the wood, and the things that were laid upon it.

22

And when this was done, and the time came that the sun shone out,
which before was in a cloud, there was a great fire kindled, so that
all wondered.

The miracle of Second Maccabees is not the miracle of the oil but is
that of the rekindling of the sacred fire during Nehemiah's
governorship of the Yehud administrative district of the Persian
Empire. The territory of this district corresponded only to a portion
of the area of the pre-exilic Kingdom of Judah.

The rekindling miracle took place approximately four centuries earlier
than the rebellion on the 25th of Kislev (Casleu), which the
Hasmoneans designated the first day of Hanukkah. The Hasmoneans
connected themselves with this miracle in order to claim legitimacy to
rule Hellenistic Judea even though they came from Modiin outside of
Persian Yehud and were not descendants of the elite transplanted from
Mesopotamia to Jerusalem at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

The issue of the lineage of the Hasmoneans has been obscured in the
canonical and deuterocanonical books of the Bible because the Book of
Ezra probably purposefully conflates the people of the land (of Yehud)
and Samaritans (or Samarians) as groups with whom the new Jerusalem
elite of Yehud were not supposed to intermarry.

The description of the social political situation makes no sense
because Samaritans had their own Temple and their own elite certified
by the Persian Emperor, and in the 6th century they almost certainly
had no particular interest in aiding or hindering the construction of
the Second Temple.

The text of Ezra mixes the politics of two different periods. In the
6th and 5th centuries BCE, the central Persian government had a
practice of installing elites with no connection to local populations
to act as agents of the central government. Such elites might be
associated with a dubious local pedigree, but first and foremost they
represented Persian interests. Thus even though the territory of
Palestine is naturally within the Egyptian sphere of influence, in the
Torah text of the "returnees" Egypt plays the role of villain and
unappeasable enemy of the Children of Israel. Because intermarriage
with the people of the land (the am haaretz of the Book of Ezra) might
weaken commitment to Persia, the new Persian-backed elite maintained
their privileges as long as they kept separate and established no
family allegiances with the locals.


http://pictures.aol.com/ap/singleImage.do?pid=0e90FeYNhSZk6k7PJEx0PwHvBHdjgiw9giCov4xQp5Fd3Ig=
Persian Yehud
Modi'in was located about 35 mi. SE of Joppa just outside the borders


By the time of the establishment of Hellenistic dynasties that
replaced the Persian Empire, the people of the land have fully
assimilated to the religious practices of the Persian-created elites
in both Judea and Samaria, and the main tensions no longer manifest
themselves between Mesopotamian "returnees" and the people of the land
but between Samarians and Judeans. Depending on when the texts of Ezra
and Nehemiah were composed, they either reflected these tensions or
were modified for consistency with the later historical situation.

For more than a century after Alexander's conquest of the Middle East,
the "returnee" elite in Jerusalem manages to cling to authority in
Judea, but the Maccabees seize an opportunity to displace this elite
shortly after the Romans humiliate Antiochos in Egypt. There may have
been some minor skirmishes with a Syro-Greek garrison that supported
the old Persian elite, but in the end Antiochos probably did not care
whether the old or a new elite held power in Judea, and from his
standpoint an independent buffer state between Hellenistic Syria and
Roman-dominated Egypt provided many benefits.

Supporters of the Hasmoneans wrote the history of the Maccabean
triumph to minimize the intra-Judean conflict by emphasizing or
fabricating a conflict between Hellenism and Second Temple Judaism.
Yet the Hasmoneans themselves became thorough-going Hellenizers while
they simultaneously legitimized their dynasty by injecting their
victory into the core of the Jerusalem Temple Religion by adding
Hanukkah into the sacred calendar in a way that radically reshaped
Second Temple religious concepts.

The operation of calendar, the dates of Holy Days, and the associated
meanings were key issues of spirituality and religious debate in
Second Temple Judaism. Open questions still remained until the end of
the Geonic Period, and Saadyah Gaon took part in calendar debates in
the 10th century CE.

The Second Temple sacred calendar begins with the Passover liberation
at approximately the equinox of spring. Next follows the law giving
and rebellion at the Festival of Weeks at approximately the summer
solstice. The warmth of summer corresponds in a way to the glory of
the unified monarchy. Then comes repentance during the month of Elul
as the summer draws to a close in the royal New Year. Ten days later
comes the Day of Atonement, and the last holiday of the Temple's
sacred calendar is the harvest Festival of Tabernacles or Booths with
the associated Celebration of the Law and Assembly of the Eighth. The
flimsy dwelling structures of the composite celebration presages
weakness, dependency, and coming exile (Golah). .

Instead of returning to the start of the cycle in the spring, from the
Hasmonean standpoint Hanukkah was supposed to legitimize the rule of
the new royal dynasty by resolving the calendrical cycle with a
celebration of the miraculous birth of a strong central expansive
Judean state led by a warrior king, who defeated the forces of Golah
near the winter solstice exactly when Nehemiah's earlier miraculous
rekindling took place in a blaze of light and warmth that defeated the
darkness and cold of winter.

The Hasmoneans drew an analogy explicitly between themselves and Ezra
as well as implicitly between themselves and the House of David (to
invoke the concept of the Messiah, the son of David) by rededicating
the Temple. They connected themselves with messianic yearnings that
were often expressed in combination with the star prophecy that later
became associated with the Star of Bethlehem:

I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh:
there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of
Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the
children of Sheth. [Numbers 24:17]

Almost subconsciously by putting a new Festival of Light at the 25th
of Kislev so close to the winter solstice and the ancient winter
festival of light, the Hasmonean legitimization narrative also
connected with the ancient sacred calendar and Sacrificial King of the
older mythic traditions, which still lived in the mostly pagan
Idumaean, Galilean, and Peraean districts that the Hasmoneans
eventually added to their kingdom and Judaized.

According to the core of this myth, the Sacrificial King, who is also
known as the Ever-Dying God, mates with the Great or White Goddess to
impregnate her, and he is sacrificed to fertilize the land in a sort
of apotheosis that transforms him into the powerful Summer God, who
gradually withers as the seasons progress. Nine months later at the
winter solstice, which is celebrated in a festival of lights, the
goddess gives birth to her former lover as a miraculous child, who
rapidly matures into the sacrificial king to mate with her once again
in the spring to restart the cycle.#

In later forms of the Sacrificial King myth, the Sacrificial or Sacred
King avoids death through the substitution of a tanist, who is a sort
of understudy or designated substitute and is often the brother or son
of the Sacred King. In such versions the Sacred King is revitalized as
the life-force of the tanist drains away. In the latest versions, the
sacrifice is eliminated altogether as the high god informs the
participants via a messenger, who in Greek mythology may be a divine
or semi-divine being like Herakles, that he despises human sacrifice.

The Great Goddess often expresses herself in these myths and others as
a trinity consisting of the virgin, the matron, and the crone, who in
later patriarchal mythologies are reduced to the Fates (Moriae in
Latin) or to the Furies (euphemistically called the Eumenides). James
Frazer and Robert Graves discuss the Sacrificial King and the Great
Goddess in detail in The Golden Bough and The White Goddess respectively.

The Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament incorporate or retain
a vestige of the Sacrificial King myth in the accounts of the Abraham,
Sarah, and Hagar. Studying theses Biblical stories in parallel with
the Greek myth of Athamas, Nephele and Ino helps to elucidate the
underlying mythological substratum of the Jewish and Christian Bibles
and its application to questions of the covenantal and royal legacy
that the Maccabees seized by force.

From the standpoint of mythological analysis, Abraham of the Bible and
Athamas of the Greek myths are married to the triple goddess in
disguise. The Biblical triple goddess consists of Sarah, Hagar, and
Keturah. Traditional Jewish midrash (exegesis) tries to explain
Keturah away as Hagar under another name. The Greek triple goddess
consists of Ino and Nephele, who are the wives of Athamas, and Helle,
who is the daughter of Athamas and Nephele. The Greek Athamas is an
obvious variant of Adam, but Adam in the ancient Canaanite myths is
also the Red Man (Edom) of Hebron, who is replaced in the Bible by
Abraham. Abraham is originally the high father Av Ram but is also Av
Raham or Av Rahab (by a pun or labial consonant transformation as
sometimes occurs in Semitic languages).

Av Rahab is the father of the Sea Monster or Poseidon. Worship of
Poseidon at inland Hebron seems unlikely, but the ancient glass
industry at Hebron was explained by Phoenician settlers or immigrants.
If Biblical Abraham or mythic Athamas is associated with Poseidon, at
least one of his wives should be a sea goddess or nymph, and indeed
Ino is transformed into the sea goddess, Leukothea (White Goddess). In
Greek mythology, sea goddesses and nymphs are associated with laughter
or mirth probably because sailors often perceive dolphins as laughing.
Sarah is Abraham's wife, who laughs when the birth of Isaac is
promised. Nephele (cloud), who bears an heir, and Helle (spark?), who
is driven to flight, act in some ways like Hagar while the name
Nephele is associate with the meaning of Keturah (incense).

Nephele is the mother of Phrixos (thrilling, causing shivers) just as
Hagar is the mother of Ismael, a wild-onager of a man.+

In order to guarantee that her sons Leachos and Melicertes will
inherit their father's kingdom, Ino bribes an oracle to tell Athamas
that Phrixos and Helle must be sacrificed to save the Athamas' kingdom
from famine.

Just at the moment that Athamas is about to sacrifice Phrixos, a
magical golden ram appears to rescue him. Phrixos and Helle climb onto
the back of the ram, who flies them toward the east. Helle falls off
and drowns while flying over the straights now called Hellespont after
her. The ram lands with Phrixos in Aea where Phrixos sacrifices the
ram to thank Zeus for his rescue. Phrixos gives the golden fleece to
Aeetes the King of Aea. The ram undergoes an apotheosis to become the
constellation Aries.

In some sense the Greek version is closer to the common Islamic
interpretation that Abraham nearly sacrifices Ismael (the Adha) and
not Isaac (the Akeidah) as the Bible describes, but the identity of
the near victim is not so important as the idea of associating the
transfer of the Abrahamic covenant with the near sacrifice that
sanctifies the near victim and his descendants. The issue of the
transfer of the covenant became important in Judea as the decadent and
brutal Hasmonean heirs were supplanted by the even more brutal and
corrupt Herodian dynasty.

The Hasmoneans were basically usurpers, but they could claim a Judean
and priestly heritage. The Herodians were usurpers of usurpers and
traced their origins to the pagan priests of Idumea. As the Judean
kingdom collapses in tyranny, its peoples reinterpret the idea of the
Covenant of Israel and begin to look for a more personal salvation in
lieu of the failed experiment in national political salvation.

The Biblical concept of the suffering servant was an important source
of comfort during the crises and oppression of Herodian Judea. The
suffering servant lives according to the Law and loves God even as he
suffers under unbearable and unjust burdens, Yet the suffering people
of Israel could hope that they would receive God's ultimate mercy in
the same way that God favored Joseph, who was sold into slavery, then
rose to the pinnacle of power in Egypt, and in the end saved Israel
and the Children of Israel.

For much of the population of Greco-Roman Palestine, the apocalypse
and destruction of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE represented a
recapitulation of the conquest and apocalypse of the Southern Kingdom
and the destruction of the First Temple as described in scripture. In
the aftermath of the devastation and as real memory of the Persian
imperial period faded, many among the population of Palestine began to
analogize themselves with the scriptural depiction of the
post-apocalyptic Judahite "surviving remnant" that returned to the
Land of Israel from the Babylonian Captivity not as haughty rulers but
as humble aspirants to holiness and began to develop a new "surviving
remnant" theology that quickly split into three separate currents
defined by three very different understandings of Jesus.

The most conservative reaction to Jesus rejects granting him any
status as prophet or messiah. This stream of thought develops into
Talmudic Judaism and opposing proto-Karaite religious factions, which
eventually crystallize as Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism around the 10th
century CE. Even though this spiritual current characterizes Jesus as
a bastard, a charlatan and a magician, and even though it takes pride
in the belief that the Sanhedrin ordered the execution of Jesus, it
accepts much of the teachings of Jesus and his followers but tends to
ascribe them to sages that lived before Jesus was born.

Another conservative reaction, which eventually becomes Constantinian
Christianity, reintegrates and evolves many of the religious,
political and spiritual ideas current in Greco-Roman Palestine at the
time of the Hasmoneans and the Herodians. This stream of thought
combines together

*
the suffering servant concept, which has some affinities to the
much later Rabbinic Jewish concept of torah lishmah (studying and
observing the Torah for its own sake without thought of a [covenantal]
reward),
*
the idea of a Messiah, the son of Joseph,
*
the Hasmonean messianic narrative that connects with the idea of
the Messiah, the son of David, and
*
the mythology of the sacred or sacrificial king

in order to understand the mission of Jesus the Savior, who is
according to Christian scripture both the son of Joseph and descended
from the lineage of David. The complexity of this interpretation of
Jesus is disconnected from the simplicity and directness of his
message of piety and righteousness.

The New Testament epistles develop the idea that the perfect sacrifice
of Jesus transcends the incomplete sacrifice of Isaac and that the
Abrahamic Covenant is renewed and reformulated for Jesus' followers,
who now constitute the true Israel.

In the Christian nativity story, the birth of Jesus at approximately
the winter solstice in a festival of lights in a fulfillment of the
star prophecy provides a new resolution for the calendrical cycle of
the Jerusalem Temple Religion. Developing a new understanding of the
sacred calendar became critical with the destruction of the Temple and
the concomitant collapse of the associated religious system.

In Christian interpretation of the sacred calendar, the second
Jerusalem Temple becomes irrelevant except as a symbol of corruption
that must be overcome, and the miraculous child born at the time of
the festival of lights in the cold of winter, which represents death
as well as Golah. The child grows into the sacred king, who triumphs
over mortality and brings everlasting life to his followers when he
undergoes apotheosis as the true sacrificial king in the spring of
liberation. Passover no longer simply frees the Israelites from the
yoke of servitude and the burdens of exile but becomes the Easter
celebration of the liberation of mortal men and women from the curse
of death as long as they live justly and emulate Jesus, the suffering
servant of God. Robert Graves's novel King Jesus can serve as an
introduction to the thought processes underlying Jesus' mythographic
transmogrification as long as one keeps in mind that it is a learned
and very poetic form of prose fiction and neither history nor
classical scholarship.

The most radical reaction, whose ideas Islam expresses, rejects the
mishmash of apocalyptic, covenantal, and mythological ideas that
transformed Jesus from a prophet and completely human messiah to the
humble people of the land into an invincible divinity, who harrows Hell.

The Prolegomena to the Qur'an by al-Sayyid Abu al-Qasim al-Musawi
al-Khu'i (as translated by Abdulaziz A. Sachedina) describes on p. 48
the revolutionary nature of the third stream of thought as it is
embodied in the Qur'an:

...we find that the Qur'an is different from the two Testaments in
all respects, and that it purifies the two Testaments from the
delusive imagination and myths that filled the Testaments and the
other sources of education at that time.

God speaking through the Qur'an simply discards the mythological core
incorporated into the Hebrew and Christian Bibles by forbidding the
intercalation of the lunisolar sacred calendar.

9:36

The number of months in the sight of Allah is twelve (in a year)- so
ordained by Him the day He created the heavens and the earth; of them
four are sacred: that is the straight usage. So wrong not yourselves
therein, and fight the Pagans all together as they fight you all
together. But know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves.

9:37


Verily the transposing (of a prohibited month) is an addition to
Unbelief: the Unbelievers are led to wrong thereby: for they make it
lawful one year, and forbidden another year, in order to adjust the
number of months forbidden by Allah and make such forbidden ones
lawful. The evil of their course seems pleasing to them. But Allah
guideth not those who reject Faith.


(Intercalation is the mechanism that kept the seasons at relatively
fixed periods within the calendar.)

While modern religious people tend to be unaware of the critical
importance of the calendar to belief and spirituality in Greco-Roman
times,++ the calendar issue was still so important in the 7th century
CE that Muhammad reiterated the prohibition of the lunisolar sacred
calendar in his farewell sermon on Mount Arafat.+++

The Qur'an eliminates the sacred king mythology so critical to
Christian understanding of Jesus from the story of Abraham's sacrifice
of his son. The story simply becomes a witness to faith in God on the
part of both Abraham and his son.

Most Muslims reasonably assume that the son is Ismael because the
festival of the sacrifice (`Idu-l-Adha) commemorates this test of
faith (December 19th this year) in the midst of the Hajj during which
Muslims empathize with the anguish of Hagar as she seeks water for her
son Ismael as he is dying of thirst.

The Qur'anic version of the expulsion of Hagar differs from the story
told in the Bible. Jealously between co-wives does not play the
pivotal role that it does in the Bible or in the myths of Athamas,
Ino, and Nephele. Abraham simply obeys God's command to send Hagar and
Ismael to Arabia. The commentators give propagation of monotheism as
the purpose, but Ismael can only truly freely choose to follow God's
command alongside Abraham in the ultimate test of faith (al-adha) if
he and his mother are removed from the influence of Abraham and if
Ismael is given reason to distance himself from his father.

All together, the Qur'anic story of Hagar and Ismael, `Id al-Adha, and
the Hajj tells us to remember and to care for the child and mother
that are left alone with no sustenance just as God hears their cries.
It is a good message for a season that is perhaps overly focused on
the commercialization of the birth of the miraculous child Jesus and
of the miraculous "victory" of the Maccabees over Hellenistic Syrians.**

It is hardly surprising that the chosen messenger to whom the Quran
was conveyed was himself an orphan and that the city of his birth is
founded on the site to which Hagar and Ismael journeyed and where
Ismael was dying of thirst until God provided the Zamzam Well located
today in the Masjid al-Haram in Makka. By the same "b" "m" interchange
previously mentioned, Makka is identified with Bakka (equivalent to
Hebrew bekheh), which describes the anguished weeping of Hagar.

http://pictures.aol.com/ap/singleImage.do?pid=0e90FeYNhSZk6k7PJEx0PwHvBJODKoYN3GxXv4xQp5Fd3Ig=
Zamzam Well
Slightly off center to at the bottom left.


Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth by Jaroslav
Stetkevych is an interesting attempt to reconstruct pre-Islamic
Arabian myth.


NOTES
* In misexplaining the history of Hanukkah, Hitchens acts on behalf of
the left rather as Victor Davis Hanson misdepicts classical history in
the service of the right-wing and especially on behalf Zionist Neocons.

In New Statesman - Lost in a muddle of greetings, Andrew Stephens
discusses the American approach to winter holidays and its spread to
the UK, which he decries even as he misdescribes the historical
developments that led to the way Americans celebrate winter holidays
today.

Stephens rather obnoxiously fails to point out in his article that the
modern commercialization of Christmas is very much a creation
specifically of Jewish-owned department stores while the issue of
Jewish participation in Christmas celebrations in schools was sent to
the courts under the cover of Atheist plaintiffs in more or less the
same way that the David Project found non-Jewish James Policastro to
shill for its extremist Jewish or Zionist racial and religious hatred
against Arabs and Muslims during the Roxbury Mosque conflict.

# This story has many variants, and the major festivals are not always
in the spring and the winter. In Lebanon among the Phoenicians, the
Semitic version of the myth of Adonis and Venus was celebrated in the
late summer. Adonis is the Greek version of the Hebrew God-name
Adonai. Venus, who is the Greek Aphrodite and the Semitic Astarte,
from whom the name of the Festival of Easter is derived, is the Great
Goddess directly but ambivalently incorporated into the primary
Olympian pantheon. Hesiod claims Aphrodite was born of sea foam while
Homer identifies her parents as Zeus and the non-Olympian Titan
goddess Dione. Homer emphasizes her foreign character by calling her
the Cyprian, and in the Iliad the Trojans worship the Great Goddess as
Aphrodite.

+ The wild-onager is the sacred beast of the Egyptian god Set, who is
identified with Greek god Poseidan even though Set is more commonly a
desert than a sea god. Set murders Osiris yearly.

++ The religious calendar issue today is rather like the debate over
the choice of a gold or silver standard in late 19th century America.
It was a burning conflict then with tremendous economic impact and
effects on the lives of many Americans, but the public of 21st century
America is for the most part completely unaware of this historically
extremely important political debate.

+++ The rejection of the traditional ordering of the Semitic alphabet
for the new Arabic alphabet created in the latter half of the 7th
century CE probably reflects a similar effort to purge the Islamic
religion of esoteric mythic mysteries that could otherwise have been
associated with the letters of the text of the Qur'an. Vestiges of the
mysteries of Semitic sacred alphabet survive in the retension of
traditional numerical values for the letters of Arabic alphabet, and
numerology of the Quran remains popular with some Muslims just as some
Jews try to find esoteric meanings in the Hebrew Bible by
numerological methods.

** In some sense, Christian observance has corrected the omission of
abandoned women and children from the observance of Christmas. Before
he was commercialized as Santa Claus, Bishop Nicholas of Myra, who is
known today as Saint Nicholas even though he was never canonized, has
become associated with the holiday in part because of his legendary
gift-giving, which included providing the dowries for three motherless
girls, who would otherwise have been sold into prostitution. Nicolas
is the patron saint of Beit Jala, Palestine, where masses celebrate
him according to the Gregorian calendar on December 19th, which is
December 6th on the Julian Calendar.

http://pictures.aol.com/ap/singleImage.do?pid=0e90FeYNhSZk6k7PJEx0PwHvBFsUQkzY35fRv4xQp5Fd3Ig=

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