Doubletapper has a post on Chanukah

that contains this paragraph that strikes me very strongly:
When the Macabees went out to battle, they had no feasible chance of winning. Not only were the Jews fewer and weaker than the well-oiled Syrian Greek war machine, but amongst the Jews themselves, only a sparse few went out to battle under the command of Juda Macabee and his brothers. Thus the essential miracle of Chanukah was not the war victory, but rather the very fact that a few Jews realized that "things just cannot go on this way", they arose, and with immense faith in the Almighty, and in an act of incredible courage, declared war on the superpower of their day. Think of it like the movie the 300, except that the Jews didn't lose!*

The whole post is here.

*being picky, in real life the Spartans were, on the last day, fighting a holding action to give the rest of the Greek army time to retreat to fight another day, and they succeeded. It was a very real victory for which they paid with their lives. Which changes the point of the Chanukah story not at all, I just had to throw it in.