Hanukkah was not one of the festivals commanded in the Law of Moses. It arose from events in the second century BC, when Jewish rebels regained control of Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple after its desecration under Antiochus IV.
By the first century it was an established Jewish celebration known as the Feast of Dedication.
The books of Maccabees describe the persecution under Antiochus IV, the Maccabean revolt, and the purification and rededication of the Temple in 164 BC. The resulting festival lasted eight days.
The festival gave Jewish families and communities an annual occasion to remember the preservation of Jewish worship and the restoration of the Temple. Exactly how household observance looked in every first-century community is less certain than the historical reason for the feast.
Archaeology of the Hasmonean and early Roman periods provides the political and material setting of the festival's origins, although ordinary Hanukkah observance leaves limited distinctive archaeological evidence.
First and Second Maccabees are central sources for the origin of the festival. Josephus also discusses it. John 10 explicitly places Jesus in Jerusalem during the Feast of Dedication.
Hanukkah arose after the period covered by the Protestant Old Testament, but its history is preserved in the books of Maccabees and belongs to the centuries between the Old and New Testament eras.
John 10:22–23 states that Jesus was walking in Solomon's Colonnade at the Temple during the Feast of Dedication in winter.
The festival commemorated the rededication of the Temple and was being observed by the first century.
Some familiar later Hanukkah customs developed over time and should not automatically be projected back into the lifetime of Jesus.
Hanukkah connects the political and religious history between the Old and New Testaments directly with an event mentioned in the Gospel of John.