“The colours of Christmas” is a beautiful Christmas carol composed by the well-known British musician John Rutter, which you can listen to here. As the lyrics attests, Christmas is a time when colours are present in a particular way in day-to-day life and in the different symbols that characterize this time of year.
From a scientific point of view, Christmas is a perfect example of the importance of the different STEAM disciplines, so that we can enjoy very different colours at this lovely time of year. The development of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that produce light decreasing energy consumption and favouring sustainability, the development of colourful nativity scenes that constitute true artworks or the use of different RGB codes that allow you to appreciate thousands of different coloursare only three of the many examples that we can find.
Although it seems hard to believe, a very representative colour of the Christmas spirit is white. Not only because it is the colour of the snow or represents the colour of the clothes of the infant Jesus, but also because inside it houses all the other colours, in a calm and cheerful way, as if they were relatives who gather around a Christmas lunch or dinner (see video about light scattering here).
Merry Christmas and all the best for next year 2020! Let it be full of colour!
Jesús Garoz Ruiz (Colegio Jesús María, Burgos, Spain)