December is the traditional month for the immensely-popular “Christmas Star” skyshows presented at planetariums around the world. In these, the various theories that have been put forth to explain it are examined, as we shall do here.
Two very important factors need to be kept in mind in looking for the source of the Christmas Star. One deals with an uncertainty in time — that of the actual date of the first Christmas, which scholars say may have occurred as early as 7 BC. The other is uncertainty in terminology. In those remote days, just about any bright object that attracted people’s attention in the night sky was apt to be called a “star.”
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