SPIRITUAL SCIENCE

Sasha Sagan was brought up in a secular Jewish household. When she was 15 she begged her mother for Christmas presents and a tree. “Although I received a very flattering forest-green pullover… I felt like a fraud,” she writes. Now, she has a husband with a Christian heritage and a toddler daughter. “She has as much Christian ancestry as Jewish,” she writes. “I found myself thinking, ‘She has to have Christmas morning!’” So the family enjoys secular versions of Hanukkah and Christmas, plus a celebration – more candles, more gifts – of the winter solstice.

“The winter solstice is also the anniversary of my father’s death. He died in the early hours of December 20,” she writes, “when the stars shone the longest.”

Sagan’s CV includes writer, television producer, film-maker, editor… She’s also the daughter of astronomer Carl Sagan, who died on the winter solstice in 1996 and whose landmark 80s television series, Cosmos, made him the David Attenborough of the planets and the stars. Like her late father, Sagan is not religious. But her new book, For Small Creatures Such as We, reveals that she is big on rituals, even the less pagan ones. She sees no reason those without religious belief should have to throw out wonder, awe and even transcendence with the unproven metaphysical bathwater.

She learnt in 1976 with Johnny Carson with a little model, almost like a toy,” Sagan says. He was explaining a solar sail or light sail, a small spacecraft propelled by sunlight. “He was saying, ‘I think this is the way forward.’ And, just recently, the Planetary Society launched one and the launch was successful.” Fortunately, the society ignored Carson’s advice to use it to advertise McDonald’s.