Hanukkah Didn't Happen That Way -
In Noam Zion's "A Different Light: The Hanukkah Book of Celebration", pg. 244 there is an excerpt that discusses Hanukah and the “miracle” of the oil. In the myth the Jews re-took the temple and kept the eternal flame burning for 8 days, even though there was only enough oil for 1 day. This, as it turns out, never happened. Recent changes in Hebrew schools curriculum have made it very clear that it was improper and unprofessional to teach the story of the miracle of the oil as having any historical accuracy. According to the new standards: "The myth of the oil is bad history, bad theology, and bad doctrine."
Teaching this myth as history violates the basic principles of Reconstructionist, Conservative, Reform, and Secular-Humanist Judaism.
It is more accurate to say this is a fictional story the rabbis told to explain why we celebrate Hanukah for 8 days.
Hanukkah celebrates the fact that a small number of ill-equipped rebels won a war against a mighty force. They were standing up for the freedom to worship God as they chose. After the war was done, they cleaned the temple and celebrated the holiday they'd most recently missed: Sukkot.
As the years passed, the people did not want to forget how miraculous it was that a small band of Jews defeated the mighty Greek (-Syrian) army, and how great the joy was at restoring the Temple. Somehow, to the original story was added the miracle of the oil.
But there is a huge political overtone to Hanukkah. The descendants of the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, had significantly corrupted the priesthood and they were the nemesis to the rabbis who were starting rabbinic Judaism. The Maccabees were attempting to combine kingship and priesthood. This is against Jewish law. It was this party who began the practice of Hanukkah as a way to celebrate what they had accomplished as Jewish leaders, taking credit for defeating the pagans. The holiday was for their political advantage. In this light it makes sense that the rabbis would tell the story in a way that emphasized God's role as opposed to the Maccabees' role.
The closest thing the Jews have for “real” Hanukkah story is the Book of Maccabees which was preserved via the Christian canon in the Apocrypha of the Bible. It describes a civil war among the Jews. Antiochus took the temple over for pagan rites and defiled it. The story of the jewish revolt against this king is a very messy and bloody event. When the Maccabees headed the revolt and gained political power, it went to their heads and they wished to be both priests and rulers. Thus, they established their own holiday. The people needed something to commemorate the battle they had won and it was convenient for the Maccabees to use it as self aggrandizement
The story, as it is told now is aggadah, a legend that tells us something about the spiritual meaning of the history without necessarily being intended as factual. You can note that traditional Judaism does not take aggadah as fact, but still treasures it.
Over time myth can be mistakenly taught as history. Families do it all the time. So do religions. True or not, these stories inspire and teach spiritual and moral lessons.