The Christmas Tree itself comes from the same source as your last paragaph. It's easier to gain converts when you redefine their current and comfortable to them beliefs into something a bit different. It worked for the Democrats converting the Republicans as a a secular example.

Bingo they can. but first they have to agree on a location, a date, a tune and if possible a direction of travel...more properly as we rotate to the east what appears to be a direction of travel then they reverse navigate or astrogate the universe as a whole to what was there back when. If you have down trigonometry and spherical trigonometry think of it as applied to moving objects and systems..Takes a lot of computer power though. Order of magnitude and distance would also help. I assume the argument is about competing conclusions or methods or it's religious in nature. I didn't read it .

However if you apply some know methods ...for example think of the solar system a sphere in which a given number of objects generally rotate around the sun. The outside of that sphere is it's surface. Plot where earth would have been at that time and date and what the view would have been for a bright star that nightly guided the three wise dudes. That sphere of space rotates around a given point in the Galaxy. Do the same for the Galaxy.. Now you have a really good projection show for one of those hemisphere theaters. Everything turning around a center point and the whole thing turning around another center point and all of it around a final center point with some odd ball stuff shooting around although chaotic or not it eventually will form some sort of pattern...

Now in navigation we used to use sextants and take a series of sightings and convert them to lines on a chart which crossed each other.. GPS is a lot easier. The same technique can be used to find positions in the solar systems sphere or the Milky Ways sphere. The two fixed points are the assumed center of the universe and an axle like or axis line running through the center of the sphere. Here we use the North Star Polaris and and interpolated southern celestial point based on the southern cross. that axis can be duplicated thrugh the sun for the solar system or the milk way galaxy or presumably for the universe but that's what we used with a lot angle and declination measurements to find a fixed point.. Enough of that.

Technology and a lot of star watching and measuring by the observatories and computers can figure out a lot of how planetary, galaxy and so forth systems move and the put them in forward gear or reverse gear to see what might happen or what has happened...in theory. We are at that age of starting to use astrogation which eventually will guide manned or droned space craft....

Or figure out perhaps what star might have been in a certain neighborhood for a date/time corrected event. Simple but it's sort of beyond rocket science so gentleman and ladies start your correcting engines....I have reached my limits and touched thstars. at least .on the surface of a sphere called Terra. or earth...

And that's how it is being done. Barring knock down drag outs in the world of astrophyisics and astronomy. .

I gave it back. That's just the Pelosi Platoon.

Question what was the argument about and what is the outcome - if any?

Corallary I think. The Millennium bunch who screwed and celebrated a year early are of the same mentality level. Worse they got the hour and and time wrong.. CE and BCE i think were the PC intiials - but then PC are really common and unimaginative. Universal Time is a bit over the top arrogant...we aren't the center of the universe. Greenwich Mean Time had a reason to exist based in science as did to some extent BC and AD which was slightly incorrect history.

To be accurate the line is drawn through Bethleham in Israel and the dates are adjusted to account for Gregorian and Julian calander changes.

Then for Millennium purposes add one year since the celebration was on the end of the 999th year and to be more accurate put PM and AM where they belong even though they are in terms of telling time of zero value except to denote, something like a speed sign or a Burma Shave sign before noon and after noon.

So arguing about the Christmas Star is probably nothing of value except to get someone their 2 seconds of undeserved infamy as those who don't deserve fame are commonly termed..

The one's who think it important could have, at the very least, got it right. But like the PC crowd probably couldn't be bothered to open the astronomers dictionary.