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n It doesn’t matter how batty the idea really is. Beforenlong, someone, somewhere, will say, “You know, that guy has a point.”nAnd then someone else will join in and before you know it, the batty idea stopsnbeing batty and becomes ‘The Truth™’ and believers in ‘The Truth™’nget all offended and shouty when you point out that ‘The Truth™’ is, nownthat you mention it, a batty idea that simply got out of hand.
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nTake astrology.nOnce upon a time, somebody, somewhere, said, “You know, that guy has a pointnwith what he says about the stars and stuff,” and somebody else said, “Inthink you might be right,” and before you knew it, the crazies were runningnthe asylum and telling folk that they knew what was going to happen before itnhappened, because they had read it in the stars. They didn’t know much aboutnthe actual stars themselves but they knew quite a bit about human nature andnthey used that knowledge to get themselves cushy jobs, sitting down, inside andnwith no heavy lifting, and started giving advice to the muscley big blokes withnthe stabby swords who were in charge, and they, being hard of thinking, tooknwhatever the astrologers told them as read and got all stabby when anyone pointednout that it might all be a bit of a batty idea after all.
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nIn the past, all overnthe place, quite a lot of muscley big blokes thought there was something innthis ‘rocks in the sky™’ business and the astrologers got increasinglyncushier jobs and their batty ideas got increasingly battier. There came a timenwhen you couldn’t throw a stick into the street without hitting an astrologer,nand this was especially true when the Romans were the big muscley blokes withnthe stabby swords running Judea. The astrologers said that the ‘rocks in thensky™’ had told them that umpteen of the prophecies in the Holy Books werenabout to come true and there was going to be a New King born pretty soon, and annespecially shiny new ‘rock in the sky™’ proved all this. This shiny newnrock (aka The Star of Bethlehem) in mentioned in Matthew’s gospel, wherenwe are also introduced the Magi, an unnamed, unnumbered band of astrologersnfrom the East, who followed the Star to Judea where it led them to thenbirthplace of the New King.
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nMatthew is pretty vague about the Star and Luke,nthe other gospel writer who covers the Nativity story, doesn’t mention it atnall. Nevertheless, the Star has become an important symbol of Christmas andnover the years there have been numerous attempts to explain exactly what itnwas. Some have said that it was a comet that moved across the sky, but cometsnwere usually felt to be inauspicious portents so it is unlikely that one wouldnherald the welcome birth of a New King. One explanation is that it was a nova, an oldnstar burning itself out, and Chinese astronomers recorded just such a nova thatnhappened in 5 BCE.
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nThe first person to speculate on the real nature of the Starnwas the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who calculated that it could havenbeen a conjunction of the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in 6nBCE. Triple conjunctions occur when three planets approach each other closelynin the night sky, and are relatively rare, so it is a possibility. There werenother conjunctions that would have been observable from Judea at around aboutnthe same time – in 7 BCE, Jupiter and Saturn drew close on three occasions (Mayn22nd, October 5th and December 1st), and onnAugust 12th 3 BCE, Jupiter and Venus came into close conjunction. Inn2 BCE, on June 17th, Jupiter and Venus actually overlapped, an eventncalled an occultation, and that would certainly have interested the Magi.
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nOccultations are when two planets pass across each other and are astonishinglynrare occurrences – the last occultation seen from Earth happened on January 3rdn1818, and the next will not take place until November 22nd 2065,n(both involving Venus and Jupiter). Without modern optical telescopes, thenoccultation would have looked like a single, bright star when seen from thenEarth. Both of the gospel writers (Matthew and Luke) agree that Jesus was bornnduring the reign of Herod but historians are at odds on the year of Herod’sndeath. Most agree he died in 4 BCE, which rules out the occultation mentionednearlier as the phenomenon of the Star of Bethlehem, but some others have datednhis death to 1 BCE, which allows for the occultation to be considered as anpossibility, at least.
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nOf course, we are talking about a big rock and a ball ofngas that look like they overlap in the sky, in spite of them being millions ofnmiles apart, and assigning some significance to this, which is a batty idea.nSome religious folks seek to explain the Christmas Star away as a purelynsymbolic thing, with some going so far as to fall back on that old chestnut of ‘Goddidit’ and you can’t counter blind faith of that sort with anynkind of logic.
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nMaybe we’ll never be certain what the Christmas Star was, but itnis a great image that has become central to our Christmas celebrations, findingnits way onto uncountable cards, umpteen decorations and the tops of innumerablenChristmas trees. And if it symbolises anything that promotes peace, love andngoodwill to all men, then maybe that’s not such a batty idea.
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