These are not stars weith their own light, but planets merely reflecting the light shed by our local star, the sun. Attributing some religious meaning to this conjunction which is only adventitious is nothing but anoyjer attemop to capitalize on a regularly occurring event.
In opposition to this travesty, it is the Southern Cross whose slow disappearance beyond the horizon led the Magi of Padan-Aram year-by year further and further south toward Jerusalem and the slightly higher hill of Judah's Bethlehem, bringing the astronomers to the area two years after the birth of Mary's son, to see the Judean King-child, the Only Begotten Son of The God.
Thus if this rare conjunction took place on the year (about 4 B. C.) of Jesus' birth, then it wasn't that which led the wise men from Anatolia, north of Jerusalem. to see Him. They were not there at the Nativity at all, as the imaginative fiction of story-tellers have made it.
Alpha Crucis, the brightest star of the Southern Cross constellation (click here), with its Crucifix symbolism, can still be seen from the latitude of Brownsville, Texas. That is the Star of Bethlehem.
