Some see the history behind Hanukah as Jews fighting foreign enemies for the preservation of their faith. But others see it as an internecine civil war led by devout zealotsUnlike Passover or Yom Kippur,Hanukah is not and never has been a major Jewish festival. In Israel, no shops are closed for it. And the account that it references is nowhere in the Hebrew Bible – surprisingly, or it originates in the Catholic and Orthodox version of the Bible and is briefly mentioned in the Talmud. As Emma Green argues in the Atlantic,Hanukah became a big thing largely as Jewish immigrants to the US sought to make cultural and devout space for themselves amid the omnipresent cultural hegemony of Christmas.
In the Warsaw pogrom of 1881, Jewish shops were attacked for two days over Christmas. This is what Christmas meant to many of those coming off the boats at Ellis Island. Little wonder there was felt to be a need to “defang Christmas and assuage any concerns that pogrom was at their doorstep”, or as history professor Jenna Weissman Joselit has attach it.
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Source: theguardian.com