Blue Moon Folklore

As you may have already read in the news, tonight's moon is a blue moon. Since it is an unusual event for the final night of the calendar year, I thought I would share some articles and folklore about blue moons.

New Year's Blue Moon: Grab Your Telescope and Vinyls by Heather Horn

Teddy Patridge at Firedoglake explains that a Blue Moon is "the second full moon in a calendar month," although it used to refer to "when a fourth full moon appeared in any season." This next one will be "the first time in 19 years [that] the Blue Moon will appear on December 31st, New Year's Eve." Diving into the particulars of Blue Moon definitions and folklore (the moon won't actually be blue), he adds: "One way to enjoy two successive Blue Moons very quickly, of course, would be to travel to Asia or Australia or New Zealand, as they have two full moons in January 2010, not December 2009."

Folklore of the "Blue Moon" by Philip Hiscock

Meaning is a slippery substance. The phrase "blue moon" has been around a long time, well over 400 years, but during that time its meaning has shifted. I have counted six different meanings which have been carried by the term, and at least four of them are still current today. That makes discussion of the term a little complicated.

The earliest references to a blue moon are in a phrase remarkably like early references to the moon's "green cheese." Both phrases were used as examples of obvious absurdities about which there could be no argument. Four hundred years ago, if someone said, "He would argue the moon was blue," the average sixteenth century man would take it the way we understand, "He'd argue that black is white." This understanding of a blue moon being absurd (the first meaning) led eventually to a second meaning, that of "never." To say that something would happen when the moon turned blue was like saying that it would happen on Tib's Eve (at least before Tib got a day near Christmas assigned to her). Or that it would be on the Twelfth of Never.

But of course we all know there are examples of the moon actually turning blue; that's the third meaning--the moon visually appearing blue. When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, its dust turned sunsets green and the moon blue all around the world for the best part of two years. In 1927 a late monsoon in India set up conditions for a blue moon. And the moon here in Newfoundland was turned blue in 1951 when huge forest fires in Alberta threw smoke particles up into the sky. Even by the mid-nineteenth century it was clear that although visually blue moons were rare, they did happen from time to time. So the phrase "once in a blue moon" came about. It meant then exactly what it means today--that an event was fairly infrequent, but not quite regular enough to pinpoint. That's meaning number four, and today it is still the main one.

From InfoPlease:

"Blue moon" appears to have been a colloquial expression long before it developed its calendrical senses. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first reference to a blue moon comes from a proverb recorded in 1528:

If they say the moon is blue,
We must believe that it is true.

Saying the moon was blue was equivalent to saying the moon was made of green (or cream) cheese; it indicated an obvious absurdity. In the 19th century, the phrase until a blue moon developed, meaning "never." The phrase, once in a blue moon today has come to mean "every now and then" or "rarely"—whether it gained that meaning through association with the lunar event remains uncertain.

And of course, Wikipedia has a somewhat informative article about Blue Moons, too.

And final question: What earworm starts in your ear when you hear the phrase "Blue Moon?" And which version? I'm tied between The Marcels and Ella Fitzgerald and The Mavericks. They keep alternating in my head because I love them all although I know some of you perhaps prefer Frank Sinatra.