The True Meaning of Christmas

It's about this time of the year that churches get their knickers in a twist about the true meaning of Christmas. We are reminded that we are celebrating the birth of Christ and that all the tinsel and tat and over-commercialisation is obscuring what it's really all about. This sermon will be delivered by a preacher in front of a Christmas tree and possibly surrounded by small children dressed in vague approximations of middle eastern costume.

Sadly, as far as I am concerned, the church has this 180 degrees out of phase.

The true meaning of Christmas is not about baby Jesus, it's about parties, presents and celebration. In fact most people have got Christmas just about right when it comes down to it. It's the church, which hijacked a pagan festival, developed its own white lies around the festival and has to repaint it each year in an attempt to keep the facade up that has got it wrong. Even "Bible-Believing" churches can happily stand on their heads for the festive season; pointing out even simple falsehoods wins no prizes as a myriad of excuses for continuing the tradition come to the fore.

The shape of an electric field.

OK, so this is part of a much bigger project.
I got the slab like plastic piece in picture one from a charity shop. It's the base unit from a plasma ball and inside it has a battery powered high voltage, high frequency generator. Bit like a small tesla coil - although as far as I can see it's pretty much solid state. Any coils are hidden in a block of epoxy resin inside.

I got it to try to make the violet ray work - which it did after a fashion and yesterday had a thought and wondered if it would make a small neon bulb glow as well. It does, quite nicely. The neon isn't attached to anything, although if you touch the wires the bulb glows brighter. In fact, if you touch the wires lightly you get a small arc of electricity in-between your finger and the wire which burns small holes in your skin.
I then was showing this to a friend who asked how far away it worked, and thoughts turned to plotting the effective range. These photos are the outcome of that thinking. The block is switched on in almost total darkness. The camera is set for 90 seconds (total) exposure and the neon bulb is waved around in the air above the block. What is revealed (unsurprisingly really) is a dome shaped field of energy above the block. I also measured the voltage from the neon's wire: 320 vac.

I'm going to use these bulbs as eyes in my bug sculptures. They also light up quite happily from static electricity. 150 are arriving tomorrow from an electronics wholesaler!
SS