Thanks Janice and Steve for posting.
I do think this story has the potential for much discussion – hopefully we can keep it going until Christmas!
One thing I was surprised at was in talking about it being visible locally at mid-morning. I think Mark Mattney is mixing up what comet observers call m1 and m2 magnitudes (total and nuclear). When a comet is very close to Earth the apparent size of the coma is very large so it makes no sense to think in terms of m1 magnitudes. A second point is that we underestimate the abilities of our forebears to know their night sky especially that before dawn. The wise men may have been astronomer-priests who were well able to observe/follow their ‘star’ even if it was a comet with an m2 brightness of say the 2nd magnitude in the pre-dawn sky: fuzzy stars really stand out!