- Some astronomers believe that Jesus was actually born around June 17, 2 B.C., when a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter would have made the planets appear as a single “beacon of light” — the star the Wise Men followed to the stable.
- Good will toward men, and biometric fingerprinting: Today’s border agencies would not have let the Magi in. (See UK Border Agency’s holiday card, above, and this 2005 London Underground service announcement.)
- When Dickens’ A Christmas Carol appeared in 1843, the holiday was “a relatively minor affair that ranked far below Easter.” See NPR’s excerpt from Les Standiford’s The Man Who Invented Christmas.
- More seasonal Dickens: Morgan Meis on the real charms of A Christmas Carol; online views of the author’s corrected manuscript, which is on display at the Morgan through January 10; morbid Charles Dickens; and notes following my visit to his only surviving London home.
- In “a cross between the nativity and one of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories,” Jeanette Winterson reimagines the nativity story from the donkey’s perspective.
- Finally, here are a couple gifts that are no longer available to holiday shoppers: a mouse toy that allegedly sings “pedophile, pedophile” rather than “Jingle Bells,” and whiskey toothpaste.