Blessed Christmas Eve and MERRY CHRISTMAS

It occurred to me that many bloggers, have somewhere stored, a Christmas blog they trot out each year to look at and revisit. Below is my offering for this venerable tradition…

Like many people, I have Christmas traditions.

I watch Jim Carrey’s HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. I check out a copy of Dicken’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL (the version with Patrick Stewart, Star Trek:TNG’s Jean-Luc Picard playing Ebenezer Scrooge). I snuggle up to the TV to listen to Burl Ives sing in the animatronic version of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER.

Of course, I read the Christmas story from Luke 1:1 – 2:20, but I dig out my old December 1997 issue of ANALOG and reread “Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas Story” by Jeffrey Kooistra. I also find time alone to watch the video tape of a Christmas musical I scripted with music and lyrics by an old, old friend of mine, Lynn Swanson. The musical was called “Just In Time For Christmas” and was a children’s time-travel version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL with a couple of twists. Performed twice by a huge cast of kids from my church, it included both my son as an Outsider-sort of angel and my daughter as a shepherd who was watching her fields by night.

I conclude then that for me Christmas is about the past. It ranges from ancient times in far-away Israel to present day kerfuffles about what to do Christmas day when my sister is in Virginia with her “other” family and our get-together last Saturday was postponed because of a frigid blizzard and moved to January sometime and will include celebrating my mom’s 75th (As of this update, Mom passed away five years ago this past July) birthday and the fact that I’ll be working most of today at Barnes & Noble and Mom and Dad are coming for Christmas Eve dinner and I won’t be around to help get ready. 

This past includes my daughter’s concern about the commercialization of Christmas that led her to ask us to spend the money we would have used on her to get a sewing machine for an organization that teaches women in northern India to sew for a living. On the other hand, my son loves to seek out just the right gift for each person and disdains gift cards – he loves the giving part of Christmas. He started the small avalanche of gifts under the tree right now when he set out his college-student-meager presents.

My wife was talking to a cashier at a local warehouse grocery story a few hours ago and asked what the day held for her. The woman said that she hated working Christmas Eve because people were so crabby – they yell at cashiers because the store is out of “stuff” and if anyone bumps their cart, they explode into anger. As we walked out into a flurry of gently falling, diamond sparkling “crystal rain” (see Tobias Buckell’s fabulous book, CRYSTAL RAIN to discover the origin of that phrase), we talked about the cashier’s observations.

Under the guidance of Our Father Below (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters), we have taken a simple attempt to remember the birth of the Son of God and have turned it into a tension-filled extravaganza of over-spending, over-eating and secular glitz that eclipses the original pagan ritual from which it sprang.

The original event also included a kerfuffle as well as a brush with governmental bureaucracy, so maybe it was only natural that we perpetuated Mary and Joseph’s search for a place for her to have Jesus by our searches for the perfect gift, food or event.

Take a deep breath, Guy. Perhaps I need to go a bit further back in time; maybe to the announcement the angel made to Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” Luke 1:37. Maybe that’s the message I’ll take from this season – that no matter what happens: kerfuffles, angry shoppers, divergent gifting and traditions; nothing is impossible with God. Peace on Earth? He can bring it. Deep security? He can give it. Salvation for everyone? He did it. “For nothing is impossible with God.” Amen. (First published December 25, 2008, updated December 22, 2021)

Image: https://thetylt.com/attachments/5c3590919e588b7110f3debff6f620a34446d685/store/fill/992/661/4de1aab3834876c0e96b75ecf4bd8b71a50d566c67eb401afb5643f64eee/XmasCarol2.jpg

Stars of WONDER, "Star of Royal Beauty, Bright" Christmas 2022

Stars.

The foundation of science fiction is a journey to the stars. I remember as a kid searching for book titles with “star”, “planet”, “moon” or “alien” on the cover or the book spine.

One of Arthur C. Clarke’s most famous short stories is titled simply, “The Star” (Infinity SF, 1955). (If you never read it, try it here (it's short) https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf

 Christmas lights.

What’s the connection between stars and Christmas lights? Most sources point to the practice of lighting Christmas tree candles or putting candles in the windows of homes as a measure of “pushing back the night” long, dark winter nights and having lifted various pagan religious practices in the process. Sites that are brutally honest say that Christians stole lighting, trees, yule logs and holly for the nefarious reason of subjugating all other traditions and belief systems to their own.

Others less brutal note that the reason for hanging lights at Christmas is at best unclear and at worst, disappeared like a ghost into Christmases past.

So I’m going to throw my own theory out there.

We do Christmas lights to add more stars to the universe we live in so that one particular star on one particular night might stand out even more than it already does. Adding stars to the universe – even imaginary ones on green coated electrical wire – seems somewhat silly when you consider that cosmologists number the stars in the observable universe at some thirty sextillion (30 followed by twenty-one zeroes). Others opine mathematically that the universe is infinite so that there are an infinite number of stars.

Cool! Ain’t God great?

OK, so rather than theorize why “we” put up Christmas lights, I’ll tell you that I like to put up Christmas lights in an infinite universe to mimic stars.

On that first Christmas night – whether it was December 25 or August 12 – a Star shone brightly in the night sky. It so outshone its usual companions that the star watchers or astrologers or magi of the Great Cultures at the time of the Christ’s birth – Ptolemaic Egypt, Carthage, Aksumite Empire in Ethiopia, Persia, Indus Valley Chera/Chara/Suaga/Satavahana, the Han Dynasty, Rome, Armenia, Scythia, the Three Kingdoms of Korea and Teotihuacan – made pilgrimage to where this bright star led them.

Three of them made it to Bethlehem in time for the Birth.

The strings of lights I put up are to celebrate the Star of Bethlehem. This celestial object seemed to hang over the City of David. The Roman Emperor had called for a census and Joseph and a very pregnant Mary had gone there. She had her Son, God Incarnate who came to Earth to solve the problem of Original Sin of humanity against God’s Sovereignty – because God loved the entire population of humanity everywhen so much that God chose to send the Son to redeem them with the only thing humans clearly understand: blood.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem as the unique Savior of all humanity – all of whom are free to accept that they are in need of saving or pass on the offer.

I choose to believe that I am in need of saving; I choose to accept Jesus as the Christ. I choose to believe that unlike what Arthur C. Clarke opines in his story, God did not capriciously wipe out a kindly advanced civilization to suit His own, cold whim. God used a cosmic celestial event to mark a cosmic spiritual event; and I use Christmas lights to remind me (and anyone who sees my lights) of the Bethlehem Star.

Someday, I want to write a story that responds to Clarke's -- not a vicious attack; not a mean-spirited diatribe; rather a gentle alternative to the one of an exploding star destroying a peaceful civilization of intelligences. I’ll let you know when my story, “The Winter Star” is done, but until then, in the words of Hub Pages columnist and fellow Minnesotan, Kika Rose: “These are my views. Attack me if you will, but I will believe what I will believe and you can’t change my mind for me.”

A Few Links To Follow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_extreme_0.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wihttp://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_extreme_0.htmlki/Christmas_lights
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071209222932AAaEltD
http://kikarose.hubpages.com/hub/Christmas-Just-where-did-all-those-traditions-come-from
http://larryfreeman.hubpages.com/hub/How-long-do-empires-last

Image: https://www.inspiringlivesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/image-2-e1639268944963.jpeg

A Christmas Rumination with VERY Little Science Fiction & Science Fact!

It occurred to me this morning that many bloggers, have somewhere stored, a Christmas blog they trot out each year to look at and revisit. Below is my attempt at this venerable tradition…

Like many people, I have Christmas traditions. I watch Jim Carrey’s HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. I check out a copy of Dicken’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL (the version with Patrick Stewart, Star Trek:TNG’s Jean-Luc Picard playing Ebenezer Scrooge). I snuggle up to the TV to listen to Burl Ives sing in the animatronic version of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER.

Of course I read the Christmas story from Luke 1:1 – 2:20, but I dig out my old December 1997 issue of ANALOG and reread “Easter Egg Hunt: A Christmas Story” by Jeffrey Kooistra. I also find time alone to watch the video tape of a Christmas musical I scripted with music and lyrics by an old, old friend of mine, Lynn Swanson. The musical was called “Just In Time For Christmas” and was a children’s time-travel version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL with a couple of twists. Performed twice by a huge cast of kids from my church, it included both my son as an Outsider-sort of angel and my daughter as a shepherd who was watching her fields by night.

I conclude then that for me Christmas is about the past. It ranges from ancient times in far-away Israel to present day kerfuffles about what to do Christmas day when my sister is in Virginia with her “other” family and our get-together last Saturday was postponed because of a frigid blizzard and moved to January sometime and will include celebrating my mom’s 75th (As of this update, Mom passed away five years ago this past July) birthday and the fact that I’ll be working most of today at Barnes & Noble and Mom and Dad are coming for Christmas Eve dinner and I won’t be around to help get ready. 

This past includes my daughter’s concern about the commercialization of Christmas that led her to ask us to spend the money we would have used on her to get a sewing machine for an organization that teaches women in northern India to sew for a living. On the other hand, my son loves to seek out just the right gift for each person and disdains gift cards – he loves the giving part of Christmas. He started the small avalanche of gifts under the tree right now when he set out his college-student-meager presents.

My wife was talking to a cashier at a local warehouse grocery story a few hours ago and asked what the day held for her. The woman said that she hated working Christmas Eve because people were so crabby – they yell at cashiers because the store is out of “stuff” and if anyone bumps their cart, they explode into anger. As we walked out into a flurry of gently falling, diamond sparkling “crystal rain” (see Tobias Buckell’s fabulous book, CRYSTAL RAIN to discover the origin of that phrase), we talked about the cashier’s observations.

Under the guidance of Our Father Below (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwtape_Letters), we have taken a simple attempt to remember the birth of the Son of God and have turned it into a tension-filled extravaganza of over-spending, over-eating and secular glitz that eclipses the original pagan ritual from which it sprang.

The original event also included a kerfuffle as well as a brush with governmental bureaucracy, so maybe it was only natural that we perpetuated Mary and Joseph’s search for a place for her to have Jesus by our searches for the perfect gift, food or event.

Take a deep breath, Guy. Perhaps I need to go a bit further back in time; maybe to the announcement the angel made to Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” Luke 1:37. Maybe that’s the message I’ll take from this season – that no matter what happens: kerfuffles, angry shoppers, divergent gifting and traditions; nothing is impossible with God. Peace on Earth? He can bring it. Deep security? He can give it. Salvation for everyone? He did it. “For nothing is impossible with God.” Amen. (First published December 25, 2008, updated December 22, 2021)

Image: https://thetylt.com/attachments/5c3590919e588b7110f3debff6f620a34446d685/store/fill/992/661/4de1aab3834876c0e96b75ecf4bd8b71a50d566c67eb401afb5643f64eee/XmasCarol2.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Writing the Alien – God, Jesus, Earth, and Intelligences “Out There”

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right”.

While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/eb/83/3aeb8303cd61baaaff46a45fe45b7847.jpg

As a Christian since I was seventeen and a science fiction fan and writer since I was thirteen, I understand the SF community’s objection to Earth-based religions. Mostly the arguments grant that religion is fine, but it’s a totally local phenomenon, that is, the only Christians in the universe exist on Earth. Any kind of universal religion would be impossible.

I can appreciate the argument. It seems obvious that Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama, Moses, Brahma, Laozi, and others, being Human, and creating their religions at various times; are in their essence no different from the Pastafarianism of Bobby Henderson. I think the majority of SF readers and writers probably fall in somewhere on the spectrum of “I’d rather wait and see” and thinking there will be a plurality of religions along the same lines as the Prophets in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (and of course, they aren’t really prophets, just manipulative aliens); the religion of DUNE (a mishmash of Human religions with bits of Roman Catholicism, Islam, possibly a bit of Buddhism with sprinklings of various other Human faiths) – and the idea that matter is all there is; there isn’t anything invisible, and “spirituality” is an aspect of Human consciousness alone.

The Wikipedia entry gives (probably) a fairly complete list of SF religions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_ideas_in_science_fiction

CS Lewis had a very different point of view regarding aliens. In an essay called, “Religion and Rockets” (see THE WORLD’S LAST NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS) it was Lewis who asked the question, “How can we, without absurd arrogance, believe ourselves to have been uniquely favored?” and “...if we discovered that no form of redemption had reached them, then the human task might be to evangelize them…redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us [to the extraterrestrial beings].” He continues, “Those who are, or can become His sons, are our real brothers even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts.”

Of course the belief of Lewis (and me) is that there is one God who made the universe – and every intelligence is given a “Garden of Eden Test”. We failed; Venusians passed. His idea about the salvation of Earth (and any other fallen intelligences) is actually best illustrated in his answer to a young person regarding the fantasy world of Narnia: “I’m not really representing the (Christian) story in symbols. I’m more saying, ‘Suppose there was a world like Narnia and it needed rescuing and the Son of God…went to redeem it, as He came to redeem ours, what might it, in that world, have been like?’”

I wrote a story some time ago that looked at a sort of map that intelligences who develop interstellar travel eventually discover. It shows stars where fallen and unfallen civilizations exist. I revised it recently and sent it out, and got a “that was close, but no thank you” from the editors.

The image above sparked these thoughts and while I’m certainly no Lewis, I’ll keep exploring the possibility that there are fallen and unfallen intelligences…I don’t THINK anyone is doing that right now. So we’ll see. As the holiday season rolls in, I might be sharing some other thoughts about this as well – and probably testing our a few more stories.

Me, writing on a different aspect of this: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-slice-of-pie-is-there-perfect-alien.html
References: https://instituteforfaithandculture.org/blogarticles/is-christianity-compatible-the-existence-of-aliens, https://scientificgems.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/lewis-aliens-and-the-fermi-paradox/, https://www.christiantoday.com/article/c.s.lewis.letter.testifies.narnia.lion.as.christ/4724.htm I tried to use this article as a reference, but it’s literally RIDDLED with inaccuracies, beginning with the date Lewis wrote the response – 8 June 1960 (THE ESSENTIAL C.S. Lewis, Ed. Lyle W. Dorsett)
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

THE NICK OF TIME...The Physics of Santa (A Story that Circulates Every Christmas!)

Just one night is not much time to deliver presents to around two billion children all over the world.

That time can be extended to up to 48 hours by taking advantage of the Earth’s time zones – starting by delivering presents in the (saint) nick of time at the International Date Line and travelling west.

With a total global population of seven billion, then assuming an average family size of four people, he’d have to deliver to around 10 000 homes every second in order to get the job done within those 48 hours.

By way of comparison, the US Postal Service delivers around 170 billion items of mail every year – equivalent to a little over 5000 per second over the course of 12 months, and that’s with a workforce of more than 600 000 employees and ownership of the largest vehicle fleet in the world.

Santa’s delivery outfit consists only of himself and a handful of reindeer. As has been pointed out before – notably by Spy Magazine – to deliver all his presents in time he’d have to travel at such a high speed that Rudolph and co would burn up due to friction, just like small meteors entering the atmosphere. Maybe that explains the red nose.

But could he get the job done using either of the two great theories of 20th-century physics: relativity and quantum mechanics?

Relativity
In his special theory of relativity, Albert Einstein showed that time runs at different rates for observers who are moving relative to one another (and passes more slowly for excited children waiting for presents).

This wouldn’t be much good though, as the sleigh-pulling reindeer would still be going so fast they’d combust – if they could even stay in orbit.

But gravitational fields also bend time – clocks run slower the closer they are to a source of mass. Could the Earth’s gravity help?

Probably not. If orbiting on the edge of space, then even doubling the amount of available present-delivery time would require the planet to be 1000 times more massive than the Sun – and if the Earth were this heavy at its current size it would collapse as a black hole.

But if there are no natural configurations of spacetime that might help, Santa could in theory still create a custom one.

In 1994, a physicist then based at Cardiff University, Miguel Alcubierre, discovered that there is a solution of general relativity roughly analogous to Star Trek’s warp drive. By artificially contracting the section of spacetime in front of the sleigh and expanding that behind, Santa and his reindeer can travel at an arbitrarily large speed relative to the Earth while still remaining stationary within their own ‘bubble’ of space.

The trouble is this would require an enormous amount of energy to accomplish – several billion times that in the entire observable universe.

Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics also allows for things to be transported great distances in little time, and could avoid the need for Santa to take to the skies at all.

Because their position isn’t a definite point but a wave spread out over space, particles can sometimes “tunnel” through barriers that, according to classical mechanics, they shouldn’t be able to pass.

Again, assuming Santa actually knows how to accomplish this (he does, after all, know when you are sleeping; he knows when you’re awake; he knows if you’ve been bad or good…), it would take a huge amount of energy to realize.

This is not to say that he doesn’t have such tremendous amounts of energy at his disposal, but it may not be the most efficient solution to his present-delivery problem.

Von Neumann probes
Maybe the problem of present-delivery could adapt a suggestion originally made when considering space exploration.

Physicist John von Neumann proposed that a spacecraft could be sent to another star system and programmed to make replicas of itself using raw materials found there. These in turn would travel to further solar systems, exponentially increasing the volume of space that can be covered.

A similar strategy could be used to send a delivery-sleigh to each continent, replicating itself to send one to each country, to each state, territory or county, and so on.

But, other than the odd bit of space junk, there are few natural resources available to convert, and to do so would be time-consuming anyway. Santa would have to be able to readily transmute elements from one form to another and then assemble them into the correct toys and gifts – perhaps by using nanotechnology.

Whichever means are used to deliver presents to billions of homes during the festive season, it’s clear that Father Christmas is way more technologically advanced than us.

Or he could just put gifts in the post.

Or, we could reflect on the true meaning of Christmas:

Source: http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=93