‘I feared as much. Well, come on, Jarvis, out with it. Do you believe in God?’
‘No, sir. Oh, I should have mentioned it before, sir, but Mrs Gregstead telephoned.’
I paled beneath the t. ‘Aunt Augusta? She isn’t coming here?’
‘She did intimate some such intention, sir. I gathered that she proposes to prevail upon you to accompany her to church on Christmas Day. She took the view that it might improve you, although she expressed a doubt that anything could. I rather fancy that is her footstep on the stairs now. If I might make the suggestion, sir…’
‘Anything, Jarvis, and be quick about it.’
‘I have unlocked the fire escape door in readiness, sir.’
‘Jarvis, you were wrong. There is a God.’
‘Thank you very much, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction.’
PHIL PLAIT
When I was a kid, I used to have a real problem with Christmas.
It’s true. These feelings took root in those deep, dark recesses of childhood where my memory is now dimmed, but I suspect it all started because I was raised Jewish. No doubt some jealousy was involved—I do remember trying to tell my friends how much better Hanukkah was than Christmas because it lasted eight days and not just one—but I suspect it was also just getting sick and tired of constantly hearing about something in which I wasn’t participating.
I’m also pretty sure Christmas music had something to do with it. Man, I still hate Christmas music.
So of course I was teased a lot by the other kids. I grew up in a suburb of Washington, DC, and while there were many Jewish families, we were definitely a minority. Most of my friends were Christian, and in the days leading up to the end of December, Christmas was all they could talk about. I never believed in Santa no matter how much they tried to persuade me of his existence. That made me a bit of an outcast, of course, but I took some consolation in being right.
Over time, things—as they tend to do—changed. I was never that big on anything in the Jewish religion, even when I was very young. By middle school I was for all practical purposes an atheist…and I suppose that has never changed since, come to think of it. But despite that, my attitude towards the holiday season evolved.
In secondary school, my best friend was Marc. His family was kinda sorta Jewish (the father) and some flavour of Christian (the mother), and they had long since decided to celebrate Christmas every year as a family event. Marc and I were pretty close, so I was over at their house a lot, including at Christmas time. When the holiday approached I would help them get their tree, set it up, string the beads or fake cranberries or whatever the heck they were—I remember one year we tried popcorn, but were less than successful getting it to stay on the fishing line—and then we’d decorate the tree.
On the night before Christmas, my non-Christian house would be business as usual—dinner, fool around, read, whatever. Even then I was the budding astronomer, so I might take out my telescope for some relaxing, but frigid, sky viewing. But eventually I’d go to bed, unhappy that every freaking TV and radio station (this was long before the web, kiddies) was either playing the dreaded jingles or was simply off the air.
Once I was up in the morning the long wait would begin. I knew Marc and his brother Dave would have been up early, opening presents, getting all kinds of awesome gifts. One year they both got Nikon cameras; we were heavily into photography then, with my bathroom at home being a makeshift darkroom complete with noxious chemicals that my mom was always giving me grief over. The Nikon camera Marc got was really nice, much better than my crappy Konica…but no, jealousy wasn’t an issue then. Of course not.
Finally, after a tortuous wait, Marc would call and invite me over, and I honestly had fun sharing in their celebration. His mom would make a Yule log cake, and we’d eat tons of chocolate and then go outside in the snow and have fun.
So for a while Christmas was really cool. Of course, in high school I was a band dork, and that meant every December concert I played Christmas music. So the barely restrained murderous impulse was still there, but mollified a bit.
In college, things died down somewhat because all the other students left to go home and be with their families for the holiday. It was great for me because I could stay behind and make good use of all the fallow computers. My software written to analyse and model astronomical data ran scads faster since the machines were otherwise idle. I always got a huge amount done during those weeks.
But it was lonely.
With one exception, for a few years Christmas was neither a joy nor a drag. The holiday was just something that happened, a few weeks of sales at the stores, barely tolerable jingles over half-shot speakers at the malls, and half-price chocolate bars the day after the holiday. The one exception that stands out was spent studying for my PhD qualifying exams. I was home with my parents but I hardly saw them; I was up every night until 2 or 3 a.m. studying and doing endless exercises in calculus, physics, and astronomy. That particular holiday is now blurry in my memory, difficult to distinguish from fiercely complicated equations, dozens of pages of algebraic computations and notes, and endlessly having to sharpen my pencils.
But this too did pass. As did I, as far as my exams went. But it wouldn’t be the last time I would associate Christmas and astronomy.
To me, when I was younger, winter months always meant crisp, clean air, the sharp pinpoints of stars in the sky undimmed by the East Coast’s summer haze. In December especially, while my friends were dreaming of gifts and fun, my thoughts would turn to the brilliant colours of the stars in Orion as the constellation stood solidly over my southern horizon. I read everything I could about astronomy, and also practised what I read: I would haul my 80-kilo telescope to the end of the driveway and, shivering in the sub-freezing temperatures, patiently aim it at various objects in the sky. Jupiter, Venus, the Orion Nebula…these all became my friends as I spotted and studied them.
It was around that time of my life when it dawned on me that people generally misunderstood astronomy. I myself was a victim of this; when I was of a certain age I believed in all manner of nonsense, including UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle and astral projection (well, I didn’t actually believe in that last one, as even then I was a budding skeptic and decided to do some experimental testing; I tried to project my mind using a book I found at the library, but, sadly, the girl I had a crush on showed no signs the next day that I had spent an hour trying to communicate with her from a higher plane).
The more I read about astronomy, the more instances I found of people misapplying it. Horoscopes were hugely popular, of course, as was the idea of aliens having visited humans, teaching us how to draw really long straight lines in the desert and paint confusing imagery on our stone walls.
And, of course, every year in December, the newspapers would have articles about the Christmas Star. You know the story: a star appears in the sky to guide the three wise men to the birthplace of Jesus. From the King James Version:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
A lot of folks in America like to interpret the Bible literally, so this passage is clear enough: an actual new Star appeared in the sky that guided the wise men to Jesus. Ignoring for a moment that if they lived to the east, and followed the Star to the east, they’d get further from Bethlehem rather than closer, and that while Matthew makes a big deal of the Star, Luke doesn’t even mention it—which already makes a literal interpretation of the Bible somewhat dicey—what we have here is an obvious astronomical tie-in with Christmas.