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powerful computers have traversed afar in pursuit of an astronomical anomaly that could have heralded the birth of Christ. |
by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
On that silent night when three wise men saw a star shining brightly in the east, they understood its spectacular brilliance as a sign that a new king had been born. In the two thousand years since its brief appearance over the manger, the hallowed Star of Bethlehem has never been sighted again, except in plastic and aluminum form at the tops of Christmas trees. Maybe it never even really existed. But recently, learned magi bearing powerful computers have traversed afar in pursuit of an actual astronomical anomaly that could have heralded the birth of Christ, and they think they may have found it.
NASA has developed a computer program that uses the known positions and movements of stars and planets to extrapolate their arrangement at any given point during the past few millennia. This celestial time machine has determined that an exceptional conjunction of Venus and Jupiter took place in the year 2 B.C. Astronomers had previously calculated that the positions of the two planets came close together in that year, but the computer has revealed that they virtually overlapped in the night sky, and would have appeared to form a single "star" of unusual brightness.
Was the Star of Bethlehem really nothing more than a couple of boring old planets from our solar system? It sounds suspiciously like the obfuscating line of bull that men in black always try feeding UFO spotters, to be honest. And what's more, the Venus/Jupiter alignment doesn't perfectly fit the bill, logistically speaking. No one knows exactly when Jesus was born, thanks to that colossal screw-up in which the year 1 A.D. on our calendar got calculated wrong. The most commonly agreed-on estimate is 4 B.C., at the end of the reign of King Herod, which would be two years before the planetary convergence. Still, not a bad margin of error, considering the horrible reliability of ancient record-keeping.
A stickier problem is that the wise men were most likely wise enough not to mistake Venus and Jupiter for a star. After all, "magi" is the Greek word for "astrologers," so these guys would have been hip to the movements of those planets and what they look like. The overlapping of Venus and Jupiter would no doubt have been an event of some interest to the wise men, but would it be enough to make them haul their gold, frankincense and myrrh across the desert in search of the Messiah?
An alternate theory postulates that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet. The Book of Matthew suggests that the star was a unique manifestation that had never before appeared, which moved steadily through the sky over the several days it took the wise men to travel to Jerusalem, and then vanished. A comet is the only possible astronomical object with these transient properties. Ancient Chinese astronomers sighted a comet in 5 B.C., which was visible for about two months. But again, there's the problem of the wise men's expertise -- the appearance of a mere comet would have been no big deal in their eyes.
In any event, a lot of people are ready to accept the convergence of Venus and Jupiter as creating the Star of Bethlehem, and that notion is wreaking a profound consequence on the matter of holiday timing. It so happens that the planetary alignment of 2 B.C. took place in the month of June. In a startling instance of the scientific tail wagging the sacred dog, some Christians are calling for the observance of Christmas to be transplanted accordingly.
December 25 was originally the date of a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, a fact that festers like a diseased canker under the skin of some fundamentalists, who view Christmas trees, Santa Claus and gift-giving as evil symbols of heathenism. A considerable number of Christians would support the opportunity to start afresh with a brand-new summer holiday devoted to Jesus' birth, and eliminate all that rigmarole in December... but of course, that ain't gonna happen. The global economy would undoubtedly collapse if it had to endure a single fiscal year without that vast, heaving sociological spasm of unfettered consumer spending in the fourth quarter, regardless of mystical stars or saviours' true birthdays.
But here's one solution that might make everybody happy, if we really decide to go along with what Venus and Jupiter tell us. Start up a new holiday in June, when there's nothing much happening already besides Father's Day and Flag Day, and call it "Jesus Day." No political correctness, no sensitivity or inclusiveness or any of that crap: it's just a day for respectful observance of the birth of Christ, and anyone who doesn't want to participate doesn't have to.
The festivities in December, meanwhile, would be left pretty much the same, except that all the references to Christianity would be phased out (which shouldn't be too tough to pull off, really), and the holiday would be given a new name. "X-mas" would work okay as a replacement, but I think it might be nice to come up with something a little more colorful. Maybe we could start calling the holiday season "SOWS MESS" (Secular Observation of the Winter Solstice Manufactured for Economic Stimulus Surges). It just might work, and we'd have the heavens to thank for making our major annual celebrations a lot more accurate.
Merry SOWS MESS to all, and to all a good night!
Sources: The Sunday Times (London); The Star of Bethlehem web page, Kenneth W. Collins.
© Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc.
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