Christmas, Hanukkah bear important messages for all

The last time Christmas Day and the first day of Hanukkah coincided was the year Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states of the union. Eisenhower was president, and on the other side of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev was the Soviet premier.
In retrospect, it was a simpler time. There was little ambiguity in 1959 as the Free World faced off against the Communists, as the United States and the Soviet Union raced toward space.
But then, as now, the messages of Christmas and Hanukkah had relevance to Christians and Jews, to people on every continent and of every faith.
The message of Christmas, the day commemorating the birth of the Christ child, is expressed with the sentiment of Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men. Jews take hope and strength from the Festival of Lights, an eight-day commemoration of the rededication of the temple by the Maccabees after their victory over the Syrians about 165 years before the Christian Nativity.
Christmas marks a beginning for Christians; Hanukkah contains a message of survival against great odds for Jews.
Things in common
Those Christians who believe their holiday is under assault from a secular world might have a kindred feeling for the Maccabees. Jews who watch as an Iranian madman calls for their extinction have every reason to yearn for good will toward men.
But you don't have to be Christian or even particularly religious to be moved by the biblical narrative of the birth of a child, in humble and hazardous circumstances, attended by shepherds and kings, who would become revered as the prince of peace. Or to be inspired by a story about a lamp that had only enough oil to burn for a day, but through God's grace burned for eight.
What is needed on this day, on every day, is a recognition that men and women can do better today than they did yesterday in the pursuit of peace, and better still tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.
In churches throughout the world, the little town of Bethlehem will be remembered in song -- "how still we see thee lie!" And in Jewish homes, candles will be lighted to mark that first day that the lamp was lit at the Temple.
Yet in Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, throughout much of the Middle East where those two religions, as well as Islam, were born, there is at best an unsteady peace, or no peace at all.
Since 1959, international tensions have changed. Unchanged is the need for peace on earth.