January 6, 2015
It is Three Kings Day in Puerto Rico or, as they say here, Dia de Los Tres Reyes Magos. There are images, statues, lighted displays and other sorts of representations of the Magi all over the city. It is a holiday, and families often exchange gifts on this day rather than Christmas. Children leave baskets with grass for the kings’ camels under their beds, and find presents from them in the morning.
By tradition, the three kings are Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. The biblical account of their visit neither names nor provides a number of magi. The gifts –gold, frankincense and myrrh –are enumerated and the three kings come from the assumption that it was one gift per king. And the word kings is recent – in biblical terms, they were referred to as magi -wise men, which could mean elders, sorcerers, astrologers, or other revered individuals.
According to the biblical account, the Magi followed a star, and Christmas trees often have a star on top in honor of that tradition. By judicious use of Newton’s Laws, archaeo-astronomers can recreate the skies over the Middle East around the time of Christ’s birth, and make guesses as to what the star might have been. Leading candidates are planetary conjunctions, especially of Jupiter, and Saturn, in Pisces, and then Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, again in or near Pisces. There were actually three conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn over a period of several months – a truly notable event, since the triple conjunction in Pisces happens about once every 900 years. Other theories include a supernova (which would be a random event, and not amenable to a Newton’s Law analysis) and a comet, again a random event unless the orbit of the comet has since been elucidated. See http:// www.astronomynotes.com/history/bethlehem-star.html for a more complete discussion of these ideas.
That Newton’s Laws can be used in this manner illustrates perfectly what Alexander Pope had in mind when he wrote:
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
Pope wrote this in 1730, in Epitaph. Intended for Sir Isaac Newton, In Westminster Abbey.
Newton, when he was alive, and before his brain became addled with quicksilver, would have given credit to Tycho Brae and Johannes Kepler for their careful observations and, in Kepler’s case, synthesis. Kepler published his three laws of planetary motion in 1609; Newton was able to derive them starting with his Laws of Motion and his Universal Law of Gravitation, in 1687. These types of calculations have become the basis for modern astronomy, at least as far as orbital motions are concerned.
I think this excellent example of collaboration should be celebrated in verse, and hereby propose:
Newton stood atop the shoulders Kepler.
Said to Johannes: You is one good helper!
OK, I’ll admit it again: I’m no James Dickey.
In religious terms, Three Kings Day celebrates more than the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem. It is the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrating the recognition of Jesus as the Son of God. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the celebration is of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, and, if the denomination follows the Julian and not the Gregorian calendar, January 19 is the Holy Day.
Three Kings Day has taken on local customs in different parts of the world. In Macedonia, a priest tosses a wooden cross into a river. The local men swim to retrieve it; the one who succeeds is considered blessed for the year. In England, the yule log is finally allowed to go out. The leftover charcoal is gathered and saved, to be used to light the yule log for the next Christmas season. People bake and share Twelfth Cake, a dense fruit cake. Ginger snaps and other spice-rich foods commemorate the spices brought by the Kings. The Monday after Twelfth Night is Plough Monday and marks the beginning of the new agricultural year. The large cities in Poland begin the festivities with long parades, sometimes led by camels freed from the local zoo. Poles, after having the chalk blessed, write K+M+B (each letter followed by a cross) over their doors so as to avoid illness and misfortune in the coming year. In New Orleans, the bakeries begin to produce King Cakes and the first parades of the carnival season, which lasts until Mardi Gras, hit the streets of the French Quarter.
A stern San Juan Bautista overlooks a sound stage installed on his plaza, just north of the Capitol. The
sound system was playing a salsified version of Jingle Bells as I walked by.
All of Plaza San Juan Bautista was converted to an entertainment venue.
The Three Kings greet visitors to San Juan near Castillo San Cristobal (left) and from the arches of City Hall at Plaza D’Armes (right).
A Three Kings event at the Cathedral, sponsored by Church’s Chicken, among others.
I suspect the Christmas lights and other decorations will come down, starting Wednesday morning. That means the next festival, at least according to my calendar, will be Festival de San Sebastian, SanSe15, the third weekend in January. All of Old San Juan is shut down; express buses (with police escort) bring people in from the outlying areas. More on that later.
For more information, see Wikipedia entries for Three Kings Day, Sir Isaac Newton, Tycho Brae, and Alexander Pope.