December: The Full Cold Moon

It's not surprising that December's full moon is known as the Full Cold Moon. In December here in the northern hemisphere we stand at the bottom of the year's wheel and often the bottom of the thermometer too. It's the perfect moon for seeing a certain flight crew of reindeer making practice runs in preparation for the big night.

Here's a little Almanac wisdom for December.

The Full Hunter's Moon

The Hunter’s Moon, October’s full moon, as the name suggests was the time of year given to hunting game and slaughtering livestock. By thinning their herds, farmers could better feed and care for the animals they overwintered and the meat they cured and stored during this time would help see their families through the harsh months ahead.

When we think of October and full moons, we often are drawn to the creepy images of Gothic horror and thoughts of Halloween trick-or-treating. I can remember huddling in front of the television in my parents’ living room, watching the Curse of the Werewolf  and Dracula on Sammy Terry and getting so scared I didn’t want to traverse the dark hallway that led to my bedroom. For years whenever I saw a cloud drift across the face of the full moon I silently imagined that somewhere, someone just fell prey to the supernatural.

Now that I’m more than a little older, I’ve put the fear of Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney behind me and come to appreciate the true meaning of Halloween. The ancient Celts saw the year as having two “hinges”: Beltaine (which fell on the first of May) and Samhain (which fell on the first of November and marked the beginning of the new year). Both of these days were considered the most magical and perhaps frightening of the calendar, they marked times when the border between natural and supernatural was at its most permeable.

At Samhain (what we now call Halloween) time itself became meaningless and the past, present, and future freely mixed as the dead and denizens of the Other World walked among the living. Ghosts emerged from the Underworld on Samhain night and the people lit bonfires to keep evil spirits at bay.

One Samhain tradition in Irish and Scottish households was the Dumb Supper. On Samhain Eve the evening meal was served in silence with a special place set at the head of the table for the ancestors. This extra place was served food and drink and no one dared to look directly at their spiritual guest for fear of bringing misfortune in the coming year. After the meal the untouched plate was carried outside “for the pookas” and left in the woods.

Now, of course, we hand out Bazooka bubblegum and Skittles to the neighborhood pookas in hopes we’ll avoid getting our windows soaped, but even this modern tradition stems from ancient Samhain practices. Samhain is a time for prophesies, disguising oneself to avert evil, and performing rites of protection against the dead and Otherworldly spirits. So, the next time you bob for apples or take the kids on their Halloween night trooping, just remember you’re holding up ancient rituals and just might be protecting yourself from the ghost of great-granddad.

 

Once in a Blue Moon

Today is the day for any unlikely event you care to see come to pass because tonight will be a genuine blue moon. A blue moon is the second full moon occurring in a calendar month, and that’s what you’ll get (weather permitting) tonight. The origin of the term blue moon is a little less clear. According to Wikipedia (oh dispenser of undisputed truth):

“The suggestion has been made that the term "blue moon" for "intercalary month" arose by folk etymology, the "blue" replacing the no-longer-understood belewe "to betray". The original meaning would then have been "betrayer moon", referring to a full moon which would "normally" (in non-intercalating years) be the full moon of spring, while in intercalating year, it was "traitorous" in the sense that people would have had to continue fasting for another month in accordance with the season of Lent.”

This explanation seemed a little contrived for me, though. I mean a lot of the English language can trace its origin back to biblical references, but Lent is a once-a-year thing and to have a moon named after something that's rare at best doesn't sit well with me. Digging into the Old Farmer’s Almanac confirmes the belewe reference, but also gives a second possible origin of the term:

“…in the March 1999 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, author Phillip Hiscock revealed one somewhat confusing origin of this term. It seems that the modern custom of naming the second full Moon of a month "blue," came from an article published in the March 1946 Sky & Telescope magazine. The article was "Once in a Blue Moon," written by James Hugh Pruett. In this article, Pruett interpreted what he read in a publication known as the Maine Farmers' Almanac (no relation to this Farmers' Almanac, published in Lewiston, Maine), and declared that a second full Moon in a calendar month is a "Blue Moon."

However, after reviewing the Maine Farmer's Almanac, Hiscock found that during the editorship of Henry Porter Trefethen (1932 to 1957), the Maine Farmers' Almanac made occasional reference to a Blue Moon, but derived it from a completely different (and rather convoluted) seasonal rule. As simply as can be described, according to Trefethen's almanac, there are normally three full Moons for each season of the year. But when a particular season ends up containing four full Moons, then the third of that season is called a Blue Moon! To make matters more confusing, the beginning of the seasons listed in Trefethen's almanac were fixed. A fictitious or dynamical mean Sun produced four seasons of equal length with dates which differed slightly from more conventional calculations. So, basically the current use of "Blue Moon" to mean the second full Moon in a month can be traced to a 55-year-old mistake in Sky & Telescope magazine.”

Regardless of which origin you believe, the term blue moon has influenced everything from beer to music to literature. It has a kind of poetry, a wistfulness and quiet desperation that nests deep inside so much good literature. A current favorite of mine is the poem The Blue Moon by James Francis Carlin MacDonnell.

The Blue Moon

 

Memory is as blue

As the small flax-flower’s dew,

The twilight’s distant skies

And your far eyes:

Blue as the meadows seen

In reality as green;

Blue as the broad moon-light

That is really white. 

Memory is as blue

As the world that relates to you,

From the heavens over all,

To your blue shawl:

Blue as the roads that may

Once more be dusty grey,

For one whose sight of mind

Is color-blind. 

Memory as blue

As the winds that sally through

The dark blue shadows, deep

In your blue sleep:

Blue as your lips, to be

That red reality,

Which I shall meet when the light

Of the moon is white.

So, get out there under that old blue moon with the one you love and make the most of this August night!

The Full Strawberry Moon

June is the time of the Full Strawberry Moon, named by Native Americans for the ripening strawberries they collected during this time. In Europe, where strawberries were unknown, June’s full moon was given the monikers the Full Rose Moon and the Full Mead Moon. Funny thing that all the names of June’s full moon would make a wonderful romantic interlude, isn’t it? I’m imagining a little fresh strawberry ice cream with candied rose petals and a flute of mead under the full moon.

Full Flower Moon

As the old poem says, April showers bring May flowers and the name of May’s full moon reflects this common wisdom. In most areas, flowers are abundant during May. In fact, most of the cultural names for May’s full moon (Full Corn Planting Moon, Field Maker Moon, When Women Weed Corn Moon, and Blossom Moon) reflect the month’s connection with agriculture and growing things.

For me, May’s moon is always connected with growing up near one of the world’s largest sporting events, the Indianapolis 500. I can remember cool May afternoons during the 1970’s when the sound of qualifications wafted on the spring air, over the roofs of suburban tract houses, and into my small backyard. That sound had a kind of high-octane sex to it, an excitement that didn’t make sense to my pre-pubescent brain but would eventually manifest itself in wayward fantasies about the bacchanalia of 16^th Street the night before the race. The Indy 500, complete with a festal procession, drinking feast, and drama within the 2.5 mile oval of Dionysus!

And that brings us back to flowers. I mean, after all, whether you’re talking about boys and girls or flowers and bees, it’s all really about sex. The Full Flower Moon is a symbol of the fertility of the land, the farm, the flock, and the farmer. Next time you find yourself out on a May night with the scent of Mock Orange or Leather Leaf Verbena teasing your nose, think of the loves of your life and wild oats sewn in the fields of your youth, and give a smile to the Full Flower Moon.

 

 

Lunacy

At the risk of making my writing blog sound a little like a lunar blog. I'm airing another moon-related post this morning. In an attempt to while away the hours while seeing a few mindless tasks through, I stumbled upon a wonderful Radiolab podcast that contains Italo Calvino's story The Distance of the Moon as read by Liev Schreiber. I've always enjoyed Radiolab's eclectic content, even if sometimes it seems a little overproduced. Here's the story, have a listen and I hope you enjoy it!

The Full Pink Moon

The name of April’s full moon comes from a plant that many Midwesterners are familiar with, creeping phlox. The pink flowers of phlox are a call to gardeners across the region, a bugle blaring out “spring has come” and signaling time to till the soil and plant anything hearty enough to survive the fickle springtime weather and frost. A historical note on the origins of creeping phlox comes from the website for Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello:

“This ornamental phlox is native to the eastern and central United States and was introduced into cultivation by the late 1700s. John Bartram first cited this species when he wrote to Peter Collinson on December 1745 as it became one of the first "low-growing" species to enter Great Britain. In his The American Flower Garden Directory (1839) Philadelphia nurseryman and florist Robert Buist included the following description of this phlox: "In the spring of 1831, an eminent British collector (Thomas Drummond) exclaimed, on seeing a patch of P. subulata in one of the pine barrens of New Jersey, “The beauty of that alone is worth coming to America to see, it is so splendid.” Pink, white, and red garden varieties were known by 1850.”

One of the first flowers I began growing when I had a piece of property with a little ground was creeping phlox. I’d taken on caretaking my grandparents’ house and in the front yard was a little, raised garden with a birdbath at its center with a healthy crop of creeping phlox growing around its base. They flowered in April, little pinwheels of pink and white defying the cold. Since then I’ve been partial to the plant, even though its show of flowers ends early and leaves a scraggly blue-green mass of sprawling foliage.

Here’s a little more about the Full Pink Moon:

Full Worm Moon

March brings with it a moon of many names, including one of the strangest on the calendar. March is the month of the Full Worm Moon, so named for the fact that earthworms reappear as the ground begins to thaw and the returning robins that feed on them are a herald of spring. Northern Native American tribes called March’s full moon the Full Crow Moon, seeing the cawing of the crows as a sign of winter’s end or sometimes the Full Crust Moon for the crusting-over of the snow that occurs from thawing and re-freezing. It is also sometimes called the Full Sap Moon for the rising sap in maple trees or the Lenten Moon. Regardless of its name, March’s full moon is often considered the last full moon of winter and a welcome sign of spring’s arrival.

 

The Full Snow Moon

Tonight the Full Snow Moon fills the night sky.  It gets its name from the heavy snows that often blanket the landscape in February. The native peoples of America also called February’s full moon the Hunger Moon due to the fact that the deep snow and inclement weather made hunting and foraging more difficult.

 

For me a February full moon speaks of longing. It’s a ghost of the moons of spring and summer, wan riding in the deep sky of winter. It can hear spring’s approach but foretells only cold suffering for another month. Only lovers can keep one another warm in desolate February.

February

by Margret Atwood

 

Winter. Time to eat fat

And watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,

A black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries

To get onto my head. It’s his

Way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

He’ll think of something. He settles

On my chest, breathing his breath

Of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here

should snip a few testicles. If we wise

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over

again, he shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

With a skewered heart in the center.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

The Wolf Moon

I remember January’s full moon from my childhood. My parents owned a cabin in southern Indiana back in the days when it was actually common to have an inch or more of snow on the ground through that cold month. This cabin had no heat and no indoor plumbing, which meant the inevitable trip to the outhouse before turning in for the night. I can remember the moon rising over the ridgeline, shining coldly through the bare trees. She wore a crown, a bluish-white moonbow that marked her standing as the cold and mysterious queen of the night, and her hard light cowed the billions of stars that populated the heavens.

January is the time of the Wolf Moon and if you’re in the right place, and you go out to look at the moon tonight, you might just hear a wolf howling up to the queen of the night sky. Here’s a little info about the Wolf Moon from Old Farmer’s Almanac.