Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's not a white Christmas here in Chicagoland, because we've had three, count 'em, three days above freezing. It would be, because it rained all yesterday, but that's just fine with me. Given the choice between a white Christmas and comparitively pleasant temperatures, I'll take the pleasant temperatures.

I've actually had all the Christmas celebrations I'm going to have already. My brother was up from Chattanooga last week, and my sister was going on vacation early on Friday, so we had our family gathering on Thursday. Heidi's family celebrates on Christmas Eve. After church today, we'll be heading up and spending some time with my mom, just so she's not alone on Christmas, but it's more a get-together than a Christmas celebration. Among the festivities today will include doing laundry and assembling a lego X-Wing for my nephew.

However, on Friday, Heidi and I got to enjoy the 45-degree temperatures and go downtown and bum around for a while. We saw this fascinating show at the planetarium on the Bethlehem Star, and their theories surrounding what the whole thing probably was (which coincide with my theories). Supposedly, the Magi was a common term for the Zoroastrian Astronomers of the time, and they were big into the astrological importance of things, which explains why foreigners had to come to Jerusalem to talk about the wonders in the sky; the Hebrews were frbidden to practice astrology. Please note that I'm going to delve into astrology here; I DO NOT believe in astrology, but the Zoroastrians did, and they came from Persia to Israel, and Matthew wrote about it. Anyway, Leo was supposed to be an important constellation in the Hebrew context, referring to the Lion of Judah. Regulus is a star in that constellation, a star commonly associated with kingship. Juipter was also associated with kingship, and Venus was associated with birth. A convergence of planets was when two planets came close together, and was considered important. Anyway, Jesus was probably born between 3BC and 2BC, and about a year prior to that, there was a convergence of Jupiter and Venus right near Regulus. Since Venus is a fast-moving planet, it moved away from Jupiter as Juipter slowly passed Regulus, but, because of the Earth's movement, Jupiter appears to double back for a little bit. The Zoroastrians knew this, but where it doubled back was interesting. It passed Regulus, backed up across Regulus again, and then passed back again, so crossing Regulus three times over the course of it's trek across the sky, and by the time it got to the western end (Israel is west of Persia), Venus came back in conjunction with Jupiter, but not just nearby, Venus came so close it sat right on top of Jupiter making one dot. Now, the zoroastrians had some prophecy about a king being born that would save the world around this time, but the prophecy was evidently a little vague about the location of the king, so this was pretty big news to these guys. Matthew never says the star guided them to Jerusalem, whch would make sense, because they headed out to Jerusalem to figure out some details, and the whole shebang moved under the western horizon. At this point, the story estimates actual months that the Magi moved out from various locations, because they had to go to Jerusalem to find out who the king is supposed to be, and Herod had to search the scriptures. If they left Jerusalem in Septebmber of 3BC (I think), the "star" would have "gone ahead of them;" the Regulus/Jupiter/Venus combo rose up in the east about that time, and if you're heading south and looking at a star/planet combo to the east, it looks like it's moving along with you. Kinda clever stuff. Still a theory, but a well-thought-out one.