A CHRISTMAS STORY

One of the more famous pieces of the Advent story is the arrival of a bright star in the sky, leading humble shepherds and Eastern kings to the birthplace of Jesus. Modern astronomers do concede that there were astronomical events of note happening at the time -- some of these were even notable enough to be impressed on ancient Roman coins..

The great foes of pseudoscience at the Skeptical Inquirer put the kibosh on any actual notable astronomical event happening close enough to Christ's birth to be historically accurate, however:

One of the most popular and longest lasting of natural explanations of the Star was put forth by Kepler. He suggested in a 1606 tract that the Star was actually a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that occurred in 7 B.C. in the constellation of Pisces the Fish. He was not the first to suggest this; the conjecture can be found in English church annals as far back as 1285, but Kepler was the first to argue the possibility at length. The constellation's name was a happy coincidence because a fish had long been, as still is today, a symbol of the Christian church and its believers...As Arthur C. Clarke says in his entertaining essay "The Star of Bethlehem" (Chapter 4 in his collection of essays Report on Planet Three, 1972), this event "should have brought a delegation of wise men to Bethlehem sixty years too soon!"

Martin Gardner, the author of the article, warns us not to sully our religious and secular traditions with futile quests to back them up with facts:

The advent of widely available cameraphones has created a new way of blogging -- people can post photos and short entries directly from their phone. This is called mobile blogging, or moblogging. No subject of interest is left untouched, of course, and Christmas is no exception. TextAmerica, a site that provides a hub and services for mobloggers, has created a group blog of everybody's moblogged pictures of Christmas trees from around the world: TextAmerica's Christmas Tree Moblog.

Mine sure did. I vividly remember getting my first bike from Santa, a very pretty blue and white Columbia, under the tree in 1975. These kids in a Head Start program in Rock Island, got their wish:

Wide-eyed and speechless, 24 kids walked into South Park Presbyterian Church and realized their Christmas wish came true.

The preschoolers in the Rock Island Head Start program got bikes for Christmas Tuesday afternoon through Bikes for Brains. Queen's Parlor in Moline and Bike N Hike in Rock Island helped raise more than $1,300 in two months to buy bicycles for less-fortunate preschoolers.

You can read the whole story, including the kids' reactions and pictures, at Rock Island Schools in the News.

It seems there are some ways to wiggle out of one of those pesky traffic tickets:

Every year, Columbia City Judge Tom DuBois allows minor traffic offenders to sing a Christmas carol rather than pay a fine or court costs.

Yesterday, the hallways of City Hall reverberated with semi-rousing versions of Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. -- from The Tennessean

You knew someone had to do it. Bradlands brings us The Twelve Blogs of Christmas:

On my twelfth day of blogging, the LinkWatcher decreed, I'd made twelve "suspect" updates, eleven fellow bloggers, ten profit models, nine Beebo ratings, eight Webpardy queries, seven mini-banners, six Manila zealots, FIVE MOUNTAIN DEWS!!! (ba-dum-bum-bum), four Pitas pages, three quick Epinions, two dancing hamsters and a link about Mahir Cagri.

If you get all the inside references in the song (which doesn't just repeat like the traditional ones), Blogsanta decides that you're l33t and leaves you an IBM T-40 under the tree.

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