Published in the December 23, 2015 – January 5, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Marty Cheek, publisher Morgan Hill Life
2015 Downtown Morgan Hill Holiday Tree at lighting ceremony
While taking a night-time walking tour of Morgan Hill’s downtown recently, I found myself enchanted by the holiday transformation of the city. Trunks of trees lining both sides of Monterey Road were traced with white streams of electric holiday lights, creating a magical fairyland mood in the streetscape. Wandering over to the Community and Cultural Center, I stood transfixed by the brilliance of the towering Christmas tree, an isosceles triangle of luminescence accented with colored globes hanging from its branches and its peak lit bright with a multi-pointed star.
The tree-top ornament sparked my mind to contemplate how astronomy plays a “starring” (sorry) role in the story of a child born about 2,000 years ago and celebrated every Dec. 25 by more than two billion people around the world. Christmas tree star ornaments represent the Star of Bethlehem. And that point of light in the vault of the heavens, according to the Gospel of Matthew, served as a navigation beacon to magi coming from the east, most likely Babylon, now the city of Baghdad in modern-day Iraq.
As a particularly pesky little boy growing up in the First Presbyterian Church in Hollister, I recall preparing for a role as wise man No. 3 in the annual Nativity play. I asked the Sunday school teacher, who served as the play’s director, two questions. The first was why in the world would anyone give a newborn baby “myrrh,” which was an embalming fluid. If these guys were so wise, you’d have thought they’d have brought something more practical like a pack of Pampers. The second questions was, how did the Star of Bethlehem manage to hang high in the sky over a certain village to guide the wise men in their travels to find a certain infant. I can’t remember her responses, but I have no doubt my youthful habit of asking off-the-wall questions must have annoyed the poor woman.
There have been some creative minds who have suggested some theories about the famous star. One of the most imaginative is the notion aliens cruising by Earth in a flying saucer flew over Bethlehem that night and their UFO was mistaken for an actual star by the magi. Perhaps these extraterrestrials desired to witness a significant moment in human history with the birth of the individual who would one day serve as the focus of the most prominent and politically powerful religion on the planet. They simply wanted to document the event for historical purposes, and their spacecraft accidentally got into the story.
Some people have suggested a meteor or comet was the source of the star story. A meteor is a scrap of space metal and stone hitting the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere and generating a brilliant but momentary light streak — too short an existence to give impetus to magi to take a 900 mile journey from Babylon to Bethlehem. A comet theory is a little more believable, as these ice-rich bodies that come from the chilly dark region of the solar system can be seen in the sky for weeks.
According to Chinese records, two comets appeared in the sky around the era Jesus was born. One came into view in 5 B.C. and a second in 4 B.C. The first of these two was observed in the constellation of Capricorn in March or April, and remained visible for 70 or more days. The down side of this theory is that comets were considered by ancient people to be harbingers of disaster, and so the magi would not likely have taken a long and expensive trip to Palestine to search for a good omen for the world.
Another idea is that the famous star was a supernova, a nuclear explosion of some star somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its light for a few weeks would be brighter than any star or planet in the celestial ceiling. The problem with this explanation is that a supernova would be seen all around the world, and there would be records of its existence in the annals of the Chinese astrologers. Its short existence would also not be enough time to guide the wise men to Bethlehem, and it certainly would not be seen hovering over one little village.
Years ago, I spent an hour or so at the planetarium in San Jose’s Rosicrucian Museum viewing a holiday show on what the Star of Bethlehem might have really been based on science. The show suggested that it was not a single star but the alignment of various planets that the magi astrologers found impressive. One idea is that the planet Jupiter in September of 3 B.C. came into conjunction with Regulus, considered the star of kingship because it’s the brightest star in the constellation of Leo. And Leo is the constellation of kings that has an association with the Lion of Judah. So the magi astronomy team must have considered of significant celestial importance the royal planet Jupiter’s approach to the royal star in the royal constellation representing Israel. Being curious-minded men, it seemed only natural for them to send an exploratory team to Roman-ruled Palestine and find evidence of some royal birth — or so the planetarium show suggested.
My own personal view of what the Christmas star might have been is less scientific and more spiritual. It reflects a psychological need in every human soul to experience the wonder of the universe. Several weeks ago during the hour before dawn, I stepped outside and looked at Venus, Mars, and Jupiter coming together in the sky. Or at least, they seemed to come together. It’s a magic trick of the mind. The planets are actually hundreds of millions of miles from each other.
Even though I knew it was a celestial illusion, I still experienced a feeling of awe gazing at this heavenly light show. It’s a similar experience of awe that I feel looking at the holiday star on top of the Community Center’s Christmas tree. That star tells us to lift our heads high and look up to the heavens. It tells us to hold in our hearts the promise of hope for the world told in an ancient story of a baby born in Bethlehem.
