מאי חנוכה?

In yet another PDFless post, I'd like to mention something interesting מעניינא דיומא.
The Mishnayos and Gemaras about Chanukah are very interesting, each in its own way. For starters, the most interesting thing about the Chanukah mishnayos is that there aren't any. The Gemara is interesting because for one thing, it starts off with the rather strange question "What is Chanukah, anyway?" Rishonim explain this in various ways, such as meaning "why is it 8 days?" It then answers with a braisa that is found in Megillas Taanis, but otherwise nowhere. (Yes, I am aware that the scholia of Megillas Taanis do not have this paragraph. I'm more inclined to say that the Gemara had another source (Babylonian, possibly, but not definitely) rather than that it made up a braisa. The reasonfor this should become clear later.)
I think the explanation for the Gemara's question of מאי חנוכה is very simple. Ravina and Rav Ashi expected that their reader would simply not know. Think about it: The Gemara was written in Babylonia, possibly under circumstances where Jews had other things on their minds besides for the celebration of a newbie quasi-holiday. In fact, being that the miracle happened in Eretz Yisrael, and had little to no relevence for the Babylonian Jews, they probably didn't feel any pressing need to celebrate it, especially in light of the fact that the Hasmonean dynasty went "off the D" and in any case was gone in the sands of time. Chanukah was seen as a total irrelevance. For whatever reason, Chazal felt that it shouldn't be that way, so Ravina and Rav Ashi made sure to preserve the holiday and its laws in their magnum opus.
I think if you read the Gemara in this light, certain things just click. For example, the Gemara suggests that there is no mitzva to place the menora within 10 tefachim of the ground, but we do not hold a storekeeper who does so liable for any fires he creates because if we obligated him to raise his menora, he may just decide that it's not worth the bother. Where else do we find that we're worried that a person won't do a mitzva? It must be, that even in Eretz Yisrael the mitzva of Chanuka was not seen to be very important.
Additionaly, there is the machlokes between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel as to how to light the menora if you're a mehadrin min hamehadrin. This braisa, by the way, may also be Babylonian. If we accept that, then it is very interesting that the braisa chooses to cite the case of two sages living in Tyre...nowhere near Bavel. The only proof that the Bavliim had to cite was these two sages who lived far, far away.
If you're willing to accept this theory, than you have to face another question. Conventional internet wisdom tends to believe anything said by a professor. If it contradicts something said by Chazal, all the better. Anyway, according to this, we are asked to believe that the Gemara created the miracle of the oil in order to make the battle of the Chashmonaim irrelevant. Besides for the fact that this does not read into the Gemara (the Gemara presupposes that its reader knows the story of the Chashmonaim), it doesn't make sense practically speaking. Why not let the holiday fall on the wayside, like the rest of Megillas Taanis? By recording it, the Gemara was not trying to whitewash a remarkable story; it was trying to preserve it.

CORRECTION: After rereading the post, I realized that the Mai Chanukah braisa is not claimed to be Babylonian, though since it is sandwiched between two Babylonian braisas, it may be too.