penance

 A train of thought on Christmas.
Is it a guilt-holiday,
a shopping-spree holiday,
an economy booster,
a time for bickering families to force themselves into a mold?

OK "all the above" sounds so cynical.
We barely hear anything about Ramadan (or is that just me)
Kwanzaa (just me?)
Passover /Hanukkah

(OK there's this biggie list)

And certain religions (wait, I gotta go google something)

Certain *christian* religions don't believe in christmas, per their dogma
Or (conservative-right-wing factions) don't believe in the trappings (trees)
And on the drop of a hat will lecture on about "Saturnalia."

So who believes whole-heartedly in Christmas?
"Catholics", I wanna say, and stick in Google's address for nasty letters
(No one comments.)

And people hawking ham

---

I nearly forgot the reason for my title.
Well OK it's tough to explain.
Street-corner santas in the bitter cold hoping for a quarter,
Or year-round people knocking on doors in the bitter cold or standing on the street holding magazines for hours.
So if you subscribed to their religion, you could look forward to a long life of sweltering / freezing street corners next to bus stops full of mean people, or 
Getting ripped off at a store-front.

(credit for illustration)

My entry seriously rambled on, so I excommunicated the rest of this.

But on a way different (much more interesting) subject, a space-probe called "parker" travelled close to the sun.
Now suppose you were planning to construct something based upon the heat-shield specs (Stay with me, this is important)

So you read (I read) about the room temp.

The heat shield consists of a layer of carbon foam sandwiched between two layers of a carbon composite, explains Congdon, whose official title is lead engineer for thermal protection systems. The 73-kilogram shield is 2.44 meters in diameter and a scant 11.43 centimeters (4.5 inches) thick. While the probe orbits the sun, the front of the heat shield is expected to reach 1400 degrees Centigrade; its back side will be a comparatively frosty 300 °C (600 °F). Inside the spacecraft’s bus, where the instruments will be shielded, the temperature is expected to be 30 °C (85 °F).

waitasec, 600 or 85?
Future sweaty bodies would reeeeally like to know!!

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/traveling-to-the-sun-why-wont-parker-solar-probe-melt/#:~:text=The%20Shield%20That%20Protects%20It,keeping%20almost%20all%20instrumentation%20safe.&text=If%20playback%20doesn%27t%20begin%20shortly%2C%20try%20restarting%20your%20device.,-Your%20browser%20can

An unsung hero of a shield you never hear about from anyone anywhere, 

dissipates 600F into a tolerable 85F.

I googled the crap outa this for the invisible shield they don't speak about, like it was planned way up in the attic outside the view of guests.
It either doesn't exist (except as magic, math and physics)
Or it's not something they talk about in polite society.
Without knowing exact details, science and the aforementioned religious beliefs become foggy, unclear, and people argue and hole themselves up in different churches and labs.

No one would want to travel to the sun, that would be crazy,
no one would want to argue against Xmas, that would be crazy
(No one sane would run for president, ditto crazy)
But people do!
sticking equipment you couldn't afford in a year into a box, using technology we'll never use on earth (more's the pity,)science will (at the end of this) go "hmm" and everyone else will argue on the details... But that last sentence was mostly to myself.