A partridge in a pear tree

Best wishes for all at this time of year,
days of peace and full of cheer.
Some simple hope, a kindly smile
can make dark days the more worthwhile.

For those of you who are celebrating: Merry Christmas. Today is not only Christmas Day, it is the first day of Christmas as well.

Why today? If you recall from the time-before-last on the 21st, the sun reaches its lowest point (nadir) in the Ecliptic on it's yearly journey (from a geocentric perspective, of course). It will be recalled that it stays there for three days. In other words, on the third day (that is, the 24th) it starts its ascent, it is, if you'll excuse the metaphor, "born again" for the coming year. Births are beginnings, so it seems fitting that the festival of renewed light and life begin now.

Regardless of our reasoning, though, we would all agree that without the sun, there is no life on earth. Granted, there's a finely tuned relationship involved, but it is easy to understand why the sun has been celebrated as the Giver of Life through the ages. Yet there is another paradox involved. At this time, the Earth and Sun are closer to each other than at any other time during the year, but still, in the Northern Hemisphere, it is as cold as gets. This is because the earth's axis is titled about 23 deg. from upright, so at this time, the sun's rays only obliquely hit the Northern Hemisphere. In other words, the effect of the sun is qualitatively different – it's the weakest – than, say, at Midsummer when its effects are the strongest.

It is here that I start to feel a bit sorry for the materialists amongst us. Differences are differences, be they material or otherwise, but they only have one kind. Given that 75% of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for, even our strongly scientific friends indicate that there is apparently more to cosmological phenomena than meets the eye. Until the rise of empiricism and its blitzkrieg on our thinking, really around the time of the Enlightenment, we had another option. We had a physical realm, but we also had a metaphysical one as well. As we know, the latter was given a pretty bad rap and relegated to untouchable status, but it hasn't gone away. We should note that it the existence of the metaphysical was not disproven, it was simply argued away. That is, if you accept the materialist argumentation, there is no metaphysical, but you don't agree, to them, you are simply displaying intellectual weakness.

Let's face it though, it's not intellectual weakness at all. One theory says there is nothing more than the physical. Another theory says there is more, at least the physical and metaphysical. I would expect there would be a discussion and debate amongst the theorists, but what I mostly see is ignorance: one side simply ignoring the other. I believe we can do better than that.