Newtonmas: because if you’re going to celebrate someone supposedly born on December 25, you might as well pick someone whose actual birthday was within two weeks of that.

My past Newtonmas posts have tended to be about gifts, which is a pretty easy theme. But Christmas, for some, isn’t just about Santa Claus delivering gifts, but about someone’s birth. Children put on plays acting out different characters. In Mexico, they include little devils, who try to tempt the shepherds away from visiting Jesus.

Could we do this kind of thing for Newtonmas? A Newtonmas Pageant?

Historians do know a bit about Newton’s birth. His father (also named Isaac Newton) died two months before he was born. Newton was born prematurely, his mother apparently claimed he could fit inside a quart mug.

The mug may be surprising (it comes in quarts?), but there isn’t really enough material for a proper story here. That said, it would be kind of beside the point if there were. If we’re celebrating science, maybe the story of one particular child is not the story we should be telling.

Instead, we can tell stories about scientific ideas. These often have quite dramatic stories. Instead of running from inn to inn looking for rooms, scientists run from journal to journal trying to publish. Instead of frankincense, myrrh, and gold, there are Nobel prizes. Instead of devils tempting the shepherds away, you have tempting but unproductive ideas. For example, Newton battled ideas from Descartes and Liebniz that suggested gravity could be caused by a vortex of fluid. The idea was popular because it was mechanical-sounding: no invisible force of gravity needed. But it didn’t work, and Newton spent half of the Principia where he wrote down his new science building a theory of fluids so he could say it didn’t work.

So for this Newtonmas, tell the story of a scientific idea: one that had a difficult birth but that, eventually brought pilgrims and gifts from miles around.

Merry Newtonmas, everyone!