The Cold Moon
December's full moon
Depth, dark, the turning
The December full moon, closest to the solstice and the longest nights. Long Night Moon is a doubly good name, because a December full moon really does ride high and stay up for a very long time — a full moon sits opposite the sun, so on the year's shortest day it takes the summer sun's high, long path across the sky.
Where the name actually comes from
The honest attribution
Moon Before Yule is straight from the 1937 English list and is plainly Anglo-Saxon. Cold Moon and Long Night Moon arrived later.
Also called: Long Night Moon, Moon Before Yule, Oak Moon.
How it tends to be kept
- Traditionally the moon of the longest nights in the northern hemisphere
- It rides higher and stays up longer than any other full moon of the year
- Moon Before Yule places it plainly in the Anglo-Saxon midwinter
Questions the month asks
- What did this year ask of me?
- What am I leaving behind at the turn?
- What do I want the dark for?
Prompts are invitations to notice, not assignments — tradition offered as tradition.