If legends and the bible are correct, about two thousand years ago, a star shone brightly in the sky leading three Arab kings to the birth place of a sun god.
But what was that great star that illuminated the night sky? Or, for that matter, was it actually a star that exploded? For a supernova to appear suddenly and send light to the planet earth in such a short period of time to signal the birth of some god seems a bit out of question, thus I propose that the magi actually witnessed the explosion of a planet.
The planet would have had to be close enough to Earth's solar system to be noticed by the unaided eye. And the size of the explosion would have needed to be small enough to dissipate after the epiphany.
If the Planet Krypton is located within the Milky Way Galaxy, light from the explosions would have taken about 3.26 years to 1 parsec distance. But given that the universe is expanding this time is probably reduced since the space between Earth and the doomed planet were smaller. Also once must take into account the various elliptical orbits of planets and the additional forces of accelerations of dark matter pulling that light closer to our planet.
As a result, above a cave in the town of Bethlehem, some teenager knocked up by an older man she never married, a man older than the known universe, gave birth to a baby. To make the the boy seem even more special, his unwed mother decided that claim that he was born on the same day that the Roman celebrated the feast of their sun god, December 25th.
Two millennia later, we honor this day not by paying tribute to the billions of Kryptionians who died as their planet blew up. We also don't honor unwed mothers who have to create elaborate stories about their child because the baby's daddy was playing the field.
No.
If you're Jewish, you go to the Movies.
If you're Christian, you spend too much money to celebrate baby Jesus's birthday.
If you're Japanese and live in Japan, you make reservations at your local KFC get a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of wine.
Or if you're single, you drink alone.
Perhaps Christmas is the most ephemeral and cluttered of all holidays. Tomorrow we will have national buyers remorse and try to get rid of the crap we were given.
Cheers, everyone. Cheers!
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