(RNS) Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights that begins at sunset on Dec. 11 this year, lasts for eight days, but there are really four distinct “faces” to this holiday.

Each night, candles are lit on the menorah, which has become an unofficial symbol of the Jewish faith. By the eighth night, the full menorah is ablaze with light in the winter darkness. It’s a time of rejoicing, special prayers and songs, and celebration.

The festival commemorates the military victory achieved in 165 BC when a band of Jewish guerillas defeated the army of Greco-Syrian Emperor Antiochus IV. Unlike many holidays, Hanukkah is unique because we have precise knowledge of the personalities and dates of the historic events involved. It’s all described in the two books of the Maccabees, which ironically is part of the Catholic Bible but not the Jewish Scriptures or the Protestant canon.

Hanukkah’s first “face” is the story itself. Mattathias, an aged priest, and his five sons refused to submit to Antiochus’ harsh anti-Jewish edicts, including his decree to transform Jerusalem’s Holy Temple into a pagan altar to Zeus. The Emperor prohibited sacred Jewish rituals of circumcision, kosher dietary laws and observing the Sabbath. Let’s be clear: the intent was to blot out the Jewish religion.

Many Jews of that era gave in to the emperor’s restrictions, even adopting Greek names and participating in the larger Hellenistic culture. They reasoned, in a sense, that to get along, one has to go along.

But a defiant group of Jews, led by Judah Maccabee, one of Mattathias’ sons, waged a successful three-year campaign against the larger imperial forces. Judah triumphed, cleansed Jerusalem’s Holy Temple of its pagan statues and rededicated it (Hanukkah means “dedication”) to the worship of the God of Israel.

That’s the first face of Hanukkah: the few defeated the many, and Judaism was preserved and restored. Judah’s victory has been celebrated ever since.

The second “face” emerged in the centuries following the first Hanukkah. Rabbis were uncomfortable with a holiday that focused on military force, even though it was employed for a just cause. They downplayed Hanukkah and recast it as a minor festival. Instead of military prowess, the rabbis highlighted the Temple’s small supply of lamp oil that should have lasted only one day, but miraculously kept the holy lights burning for eight days.

The Jewish people, however, rejected the rabbis’ attempt to downgrade Hanukkah. Each year, they saw Judah Maccabee’s fight as their own. Despite centuries of oppression and persecution, Hanukkah reminds us there must never be a final generation of Jews as Antiochus (and Hitler) had planned. All peoples, large and small, have the right both to define themselves and to survive. That’s Hanukkah’s second face.

Hanukkah’s third “face” began about a hundred years ago in the United States when many Jewish families pumped up the holiday like a balloon in competition with Christmas. Parents overcompensated for children who felt deprived of Christmas gifts and holiday cheer. As a result, they inflated Hanukkah into something it is not: a pseudo-Christmas filled with eight days of gifts for their supposedly disadvantaged children.

Thankfully, most of that is receding as people realize a central lesson of Hanukkah applies to religious holidays as well as religious people. Festivals of faith must never be in competition with one another; each holiday should be fully celebrated with its own authentic and distinctive message.

The final “face” is a blending of the first two. In a dangerous world, a people’s survival requires not only military strength, but principled values and ethical beliefs as well.

After nearly 2,200 years, Hanukkah represents visible proof that history is not always dictated by horrific leaders like Antiochus or by something called historical “inevitability.”

In human life, nothing is “inevitable,” and that may be the most important Hanukkah lesson of all.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)