There are ethnic customs, beliefs, and other "cultural items" that are preserved within the culture that produced them, wherefore they are presently TRADITIONS. On the other hand, cultual items can be exported (or can be adopted by a foreign ethnic people). So, a given country or people may have a mixture of aboriginal culture and adopted [e.g., Greek] culture. What is adopted is somebody else's aboriginal culture. HANNUKAH is a festivity that Jews around the world celebrate/enact in December, more or less before Christmas. The specific form of the celebration (words aside) was invented by them; it is Jewish aboriginally: A tray with seven oil lamps, or a clay tray shaped with seven cups to serve as oil lamps, or a metallic candelabrum that holds seven candles [a menorah] is lit in successive evenings. In more recent times, the number of luminaries [lucernae in Medieval Christian temples at night] was changed to nine, because they explained the lighting ritual as the celebration of nine Biblical patriarchs,while explaining the whole festivity [Feast of Lights] --Hannukah -- by an ancient miracle: a lamp kept on burning in the temple, even hough it had run out of oil. Well, in ancient times, migrating Dorians settled in the region called Palestine, where they kept their tradition of celebrating their seven planetary gods (natural luminaries), In effect, they instituted the holy WEEK: the day of the moon/Artemis, Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Chronos, Sun/Apollon (named differently in Latin). The Hebrews recognized only one God [Zeus/Yahweh] but kept the idea of the Week. I say: They thought of the seven days of creation, that is, six days of work, and on day of rest, the Shabat, devoted to Yahweh. Hannukah was originally the feast of creation, not of lights or of the Hebrew patriarchs. [The Christian "Holy week" is nominally derived from the Dorian Week, Ebdomas, but at least in the Latin liturgy I know of, only on one day, Holy Thurday, creation is celebrated by reading the Biblical account, Genesis, in church.] It must have been the same Dorians that built Zion, the temple of Zeus on one of the hills of Jerusalem, later rededicated by Solomon. Dorian works: the temple of Zeus at Dodona. The statue of the solar Apollo at Rhodes..... {The number "Seven" became a magical or lucky number.}
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