Nativity 2016 Forever Stamps — Traditional Christmas Scene, First-Class Postage

Issue facts

First Day City: Washington, DC
Type of Stamp: First Class Mail
Printed by: Ashton Potter Ltd.
Method: Offset, Microprint

The Star of Bethlehem

The star that leads the Magi is one of the most familiar elements of the nativity, and planetariums run programs on it every December.

Christianity treats it as a miraculous sign. Astronomers, without necessarily disputing that, have looked for a physical event behind it — a comet, a supernova, or a planetary conjunction.

One candidate stands out: a conjunction around 3–2 B.C. involving Jupiter, Regulus and Venus. In the astrological vocabulary of the period, that grouping read as the birth of a king, which is precisely what Magi — likely astronomers themselves — would have been trained to notice. Modern calculations suggest the combined light would have appeared as a bright beacon, and Jupiter's apparent path may account for the star seeming to move ahead of them toward Bethlehem.

Divine sign or astronomical coincidence, it has been part of the Christmas story for two thousand years.

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