Seasons of Light: Christmas and Chanukah

It can be challenging to come up with fresh holiday concert ideas, especially after twenty-two-plus years of conducting Master Chorus Eastside!  So I am taking a slightly different tack this year by focusing not just on Christmas for our December concerts, but on Chanukah as well.  Perhaps it’s not too surprising that these two festivals, born from two religions that share a common root, share some similarities.  And these similarities can essentially be summed up in one word: light.  Christmas has the glory surrounding the angels, the blazing star, and the light of Christ, symbolically born at the darkest time of the year.  Chanukah celebrates the miracle of the menorah that refused to burn out.  And so light became the focus of MCE’s concert theme for December 2013, Seasons of Light: Christmas and Chanukah. 

Chanukah commemorates a revolt by the Jews in Israel against the Seleucid Empire (Greek/Syrian empire founded upon part of Alexander the Great’s realm) about 160 years before the Christian era.  The Seleucids outlawed Jewish religious practices and desecrated the Temple by erecting an altar to Zeus within its walls and sacrificing a pig to their god.  Under the Maccabees (“hammer” in Hebrew) the Jews threw off the oppressors and rededicated the Temple to Jehovah, celebrating with an eight-day party.  Rabbinical tradition adds that during the rededication there was only enough untainted oil to keep the Temple menorah burning for one day.  But miraculously, the menorah stayed lit for eight days, long enough for clean oil to be found.  Whether that miracle actually happened is debated by some, but it is certainly fitting to honor, during the darkest time of the year, a light that won’t die.

The Chanukah portion of our concert incorporates a work by my conducting teacher and mentor, Abraham Kaplan, who has written a brand new and delightful set of Chanukah pieces, Eight Days of Chanukah.  He drew on traditional Chanukah liturgy and several rabbinical poems, some very ancient, to compose a tuneful collection that sounds contemporary and yet suggests the timeless folk music of his native Israel.  Since many Christmas carols have ancient origins in the music of the folk, and since they so often sing of light, they pair exceedingly well with these new, and old, Chanukah songs.

So, as we ourselves head into November and the long nights of winter, let’s look forward to the lights of Christmas and Chanukah!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside