This was a feast instituted in honor of the restoration of divine worship in the temple, and its formal rededication to sacred uses after it had been defiled by the heathen under Antiochus Epiphanes. This dedication took place B.C. 164, and an account of it is given in the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees 4:52-59. The feast lasted two days, and could be celebrated not only in Jerusalem but elsewhere.
In later times it was known by the name of the “Feast of Lamps,” or the “Feast of Lights,” because of the custom of illuminating the houses while celebrating it. The rabbins have a tradition that, when the Jews under Judas Maccabeus drove the heathen out of the temple and cleansed it from its pollution, they found a solitary bottle of sacred oil which had escaped the profane search of the heathen. This was all they had for lighting the sacred lamps; but by a miracle this was made to last for eight days, which period was therefore the time for the duration of the feast.