There is something in the human spirit that craves light at this time of year.

Today is the second day of Hanukah, with eight days left until Christmas. Lights are ablaze in both Jewish and Christian homes, as we all seek to banish the gloom of mid-winter with the hope for a better future.

I have this image in my mind of our remote primitive ancestors, watching the daylight get shorter and the nights get longer, and probably wondering if the sun was going to disappear completely. They must have been very frightened as the winter solstice approached. They invented festivals for praying that the daylight would return – and it worked, every year.

With our modern scientific knowledge, we understand this happens – not because we pray for it – but because of the way the earth wobbles on its axis on its way around the sun, and we know the solstice will arrive right on time, and we will see the daylight hours increasing again.

But there is obviously something in the human spirit that craves light at this time of year. No religion comes into existence in a vacuum, and when we human beings spiritually matured and graduated to a belief in one God, we took some of the symbols of our previous celebrations with us. At this time of year, we, like our ancestors, use light to celebrate our faith and our hope for a better future for all.

And even though the stories of the two holidays are very different, they do have a couple of things in common.

At Hanukah, Jews celebrate the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem after the Jewish victory over the Assyrian Greeks. The story is told that the Maccabees found only one jar of consecrated oil for relighting the Menorah – the sacred seven-branched lamp – in the Temple. They knew that would only be enough to light the lamp for one day, which would not be enough time to consecrate more oil.

But with great faith in the one who helped them win their very improbable victory, they lit the Menorah anyway – and it lasted for eight days! By then, more oil had been consecrated, and they were able to keep the lights going. Faith led to hope for a better tomorrow, and, to this day, Jews celebrate with light.

Christmas celebrates the birth of a child – a Jewish child – whose teachings would make accessible the moral and ethical teachings of Judaism to many millions of people who would never become Jews, but who craved that moral insight as a way to live a better life and make a better world for all.

A small jar of oil, and a new-born baby. What they share is our faith that great things can come out of small things. A small people stood up for their identity against the strongest army in the world, and with divine help, they won, and celebrated with light. Millions of people see that the world is flawed, and remember – with light, among other symbols – the birth of a baby as a harbinger of hope.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons both of these holidays are so popular with children (besides the presents) – the potential that these holidays teach them to see, even in small packages like themselves.

Light is a universal symbol for the presence of the divine. So many religions use light as a symbol – of God, of good, of hope for a better world. So as we Jews light our Hanukah menorahs, as Christians hang lights on their houses and on their Christmas trees, let us all remember what those lights represent: hope for the future, if only we would all follow the teachings of our respective traditions to love God with all our hearts and souls and might; and to love our fellow children of God as we would have them love us.

As the Jewish and the Christian – and the Muslim – traditions all teach, those are the most important messages of our faiths. And as a midrash, a rabbinic teaching story, adds, all the rest of our teachings are commentary. May we all learn those core messages, and the commentaries, and live our lives accordingly. What a future we can build, in partnership with each other and with God!

From the Rabbi of the Lewiston-Auburn Jewish Community to all Central Mainers, a wish that both our holidays be happy and holy, and that the New Year be one of peace and well-being for us all.

Rabbi Hillel Katzir is the spiritual leader of Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn.