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A BLUE MOON ON NEW YEAR’S EVE 2009
On New Year’s Eve, 2009, an infrequent yet common occurrence is happening—a “blue moon.” Persons living in areas with clear skies can observe the moon’s brilliance. In area like ours, where cloudy skies will probably hide the moon’s brilliance, this brilliance will be obscured.
Myths surround the blue moon, which isn’t truly “blue.” The term, derived from the middle English word “belew,” meaning “false,” refers the full moon that occurs a second time in a particular month.
Although each month is supposed to have only one full moon, a second moon in a particular month occurs on average thirty-seven times in a century, or once every 2.7 years—every thirty-three months. It occurred on New Year’s Eve in 1990.
And at 12:13 p.m. on New Year’s Eve 2009, the last purported year of the first decade of the 21st century, there will be a blue moon.
One interpretation of the appearance of a second full moon comes from Medieval Christianity, whose members considered its appearance as the devil taunting humanity. Since these religious folks used the moon to identify the correct date for Easter, the appearance of a second moon in Easter’s month was seen as the devil’s doing: Satan was sending the false moon to confuse them, tricking them in their determination of the real date of Christ’s Resurrection.
Since the term “blue” can also mean sad, songs such as “Blue Moon of Kentucky” (written and sung by Bill Monroe in 1946) and “Blue Moon” (recorded by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers in 1933), are melancholy. According to Gregory McNamee, an Encyclopedia Britannica writer, “it is interesting that no positive songs to my knowledge exist about blue moons…”
To continue reading about the blue moon and nature’s other blues, click on BLUE MOONS AND NATURE’S OTHER BLUES
SOURCE of some of the above information: Blue moon’s link to rare events, Satan or finding a great love dispelled, written by Mike Cronin and published in the December 31, 2009 in the Tribune-Review (Greensburg, PA).
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ADDITIONAL READING:
A BLUE BUTTERFLY and STAR GAZER LILIES
OBITUARY FOR BLUE BUOY (A Blue Lobster)
