Many consider the Blue Moon to be a goal moon where you set specific goals for yourself.
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.
I know of six songs which use "blue moon" as a symbol of sadness and loneliness. In half of them the poor crooner's moon turns to gold when he gets his love at the end of the song. That's meaning number five: check your old Elvis Presley or Bill Monroe records for more information.
Finally, in the 1980s, came the most recent meaning of blue moon--the second full moon in a month. I first became aware of the new meaning of the term in late May, 1988, when it seemed that all the radio stations and newspapers were carrying an item on this interesting bit of "old folklore." At the MUN Folklore & Language Archive we get calls from all over, from people wondering about bits of folklore, and in that month I got calls about blue moons. You see there were two full moons that month.
There have been just a few double moon months since then, and in 1993--was peculiar because the "blue moon" fell in either August or September. It fell in different months depending on where you live because the full moon was so close to midnight on the night of August 31st-September 1st. Some places got it before local midnight; others after. If your local full moon was before your local midnight, then your blue month was August; and if it fell after midnight, your blue month was September.
Back in 1988 I searched high and low for a reference to the term having this meaning, or for any other term used to describe two moons in a single calendar month. But it was in vain. There seemed to be just no history to this term. I uncovered information on the other meanings of "blue moon." But not this blue moon, meaning number six.
The first appearance in print of this expression goes back to well before the time of Shakespeare- -to 1528, in fact. In a little item called Rede Me and Be Not Wroth appears:
Yf they say the mone is blewe
We must believe that it is true.
Making allowances for the fact that the pre-Elizabethians spelled differently from the way we do today, this makes the point that nobody really believed that the moon ever was blue. So once in a blue moon meant never. However, it appears that thanks to physical phenomena like dust storms, cloud banks and ice crystals in the atmosphere, the moon on very rare occasions may appear to be blue. So nowadays once in a blue moon translates best into W. S. Gilbert's famous line from H.M.S. Pinafore: "What, never? Well, hardly ever!"
--Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, William and Mary Morris, Harper & Row, New York, 1977.
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Once in a Blue moon
It means extremely infrequently, so rarely as to be almost tantamount to never. From literary evidence the unusual tinge to the face of the moon which led someone to call it a "blue moon" was not observed until after the middle of the last century; nevertheless it is highly probable that this phenomenon had been observed by mariners some centuries earlier, but, like many other notions and expressions long familiar to seafaring men, it did not come to the notice of writers for many, many years. But, with another thought in mind, as long ago as 1528 a rimester published these lines:
Yf they saye the mone is belewe,
We must believe that it is true.
Then the next year "green cheese" entered the picture in the lines of another writer: "They woulde make men beleue ... that ye Moone is made of grene cheese."
Apparently, then, there were two schools of thought back in the early sixteenth century--one maintaining that "ye Moone" was made of "grene" cheese, and the other stoutly affirming that it was "belewe." Actually these ancient humorists were just punsters with a taste for metaphor; for by "green cheese," it was not the color but the freshness that was referred to--the moon, when full and just rising, resembling both in color and shape a newly pressed cheese. By "blue cheese" the ancient reference was to a cheese that had become blue with mold, metaphorically transferred, probably, to the comparatively rare appearance of the moon on unusually clear nights when the entire surface of the moon is visible although no more than a thin edge is illuminated. Thus, our phrase "once in a blue moon" may actually date back to the sixteenth-century saying that "the mone is belewe."
--A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions,
Frequency of Blue Moons
A major Moon phase can happen twice within a calendar month for the simple reason that our calendar no longer pays any attention to Moon phases (even though the word "month" derives from "Moon"). What we call a month, namely 1/12 of a year, is longer than the averge length of time from a given Moon phase (say, Full) to the next recurrence of the same phase, which is 29.53059 days. There are 1200 calendar months in a century. In the same century, there are, on the average, 1236.83 Full Moons. The difference is the average number of Blue Moons in a century: 36.83, or an average of one per 2.72 years. Actually, about one year each 19 has two Blue Moons, because its shortest month, February, has no Full Moon at all; for the Eastern Time Zone, the complete list of such years from 1951 through 2050 is 1961, 1980, 1999, 2018, and 2037. Between such years, Blue Moons happen at intervals like 2 years and 7, 8, 9, or 10 months. the bottom line of all this complexity: just under 3% of all Full Moons are Blue Moons.
--Michigan Spacelog, July 1985, Jim Loudon
More on viewing the Blue Moon
| 2 December 2009 | at | 07:30 GMT |
| 31 December 2009 | at | 19:13 GMT |
| 30 January 2010 | at | 06:17 GMT |
| 28 February 2010 | at | 16:38 GMT |
| 30 March 2010 | at | 02:25 GMT |
These dates and times have been calculated rigorously using the same methods as those employed by the United States Naval Observatory and by Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office. They are given in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is the standard time zone used by astronomers worldwide.
Here are those Full Moons again, but with the dates and times adjusted for several major time zones around the world. For each time zone, the two Full Moons which fall in the same calendar month are highlighted.
| City | Time zone | Full Moon 1 | Full Moon 2 | Full Moon 3 | Full Moon 4 | Full Moon 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Places East of Greenwich | ||||||
| Auckland¹ | GMT + 13 hours | Dec 2 20:30 | Jan 1 08:13 | Jan 30 19:17 | Mar 1 05:38 | Mar 30 15:25 |
| Sydney¹ | GMT + 11 hours | Dec 2 18:30 | Jan 1 06:13 | Jan 30 17:17 | Mar 1 03:38 | Mar 30 13:25 |
| Tokyo Perth¹ | GMT + 9 hours | Dec 2 16:30 | Jan 1 04:13 | Jan 30 15:17 | Mar 1 01:38 | Mar 30 11:25 |
| Beijing | GMT + 8 hours | Dec 2 15:30 | Jan 1 03:13 | Jan 30 14:17 | Mar 1 00:38 | Mar 30 10:25 |
| Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) | GMT + 7 hours | Dec 2 14:30 | Jan 1 02:13 | Jan 30 13:17 | Feb 28 23:38 | Mar 30 09:25 |
| Mumbai | GMT + 5 hours 30 minutes | Dec 2 13:00 | Jan 1 00:43 | Jan 30 11:47 | Feb 28 22:08 | Mar 30 07:55 |
| Islamabad | GMT + 5 hours | Dec 2 12:30 | Jan 1 00:13 | Jan 30 11:17 | Feb 28 21:38 | Mar 30 07:25 |
| Moscow | GMT + 3 hours | Dec 2 10:30 | Dec 31 22:13 | Jan 30 09:17 | Feb 28 19:38 | Mar 30 05:25 |
| Johannesburg | GMT + 2 hours | Dec 2 09:30 | Dec 31 21:13 | Jan 30 08:17 | Feb 28 18:38 | Mar 30 06:25 |
| Paris | GMT + 1 hour | Dec 2 08:30 | Dec 31 20:13 | Jan 30 07:17 | Feb 28 17:38 | Mar 30 05:25 |
| The Greenwich Meridian | ||||||
| London | GMT | Dec 2 07:30 | Dec 31 19:13 | Jan 30 06:17 | Feb 28 16:38 | Mar 30 02:25 |
| Places West of Greenwich | ||||||
| Rio de Janeiro¹ | GMT - 2 hours | Dec 2 05:30 | Dec 31 17:13 | Jan 30 04:17 | Feb 28 14:38 | Mar 30 00:25 |
| New York Toronto | GMT - 5 hours | Dec 2 02:30 | Dec 31 14:13 | Jan 30 01:17 | Feb 28 11:38 | Mar 29 21:25 |
| Chicago Mexico City | GMT - 6 hours | Dec 2 01:30 | Dec 31 13:13 | Jan 30 00:17 | Feb 28 10:38 | Mar 29 20:25 |
| Calgary Tucson | GMT - 7 hours | Dec 2 00:30 | Dec 31 12:13 | Jan 29 23:17 | Feb 28 09:38 | Mar 29 19:25 |
| Los Angeles Vancouver | GMT - 8 hours | Dec 1 23:30 | Dec 31 11:13 | Jan 29 22:17 | Feb 28 08:38 | Mar 29 18:25 |
| Hawaii | GMT - 10 hours | Dec 1 21:30 | Dec 31 09:13 | Jan 29 20:17 | Feb 28 06:38 | Mar 29 16:25 |
| ¹ These places observe daylight saving time. | ||||||
As you can see, Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia west of India have a Blue Moon in December 2009, whilst central Asia has a Blue Moon in January 2010.
The big surprise is that the Far East, Australia and New Zealand enjoy a rare double Blue Moon in 2010, when both January and March have two Full Moons. These regions of the world missed out on the double Blue Moon back in 1999 because the second Full Moon of that year was on 1 February for time zones more than 7 hours ahead of GMT, so it's only fair that they get one in 2010 instead!!!!
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