Also called full moon nearest the September equinox, Corn Moon, Barley Moon
The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the September equinox, so it usually falls in September and sometimes in early October. For a few nights around it the moon rises soon after sunset, giving farmers extra evening light, and its rite is a harvest gratitude meal.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Keep any candle on a fireproof dish and never leave it burning unattended. If you go outside at night, dress for the weather, take a light and tell someone where you are. Moon names tied to specific Native nations belong to living languages and ceremonies. Read them as those nations' own knowledge, not as rites to copy; the steps here are an open seasonal practice anyone can do.
Carver gave September as the Corn Moon, when corn is gathered. The Old Farmer's Almanac now uses Corn Moon for September in years when the Harvest Moon falls in October instead.
China's Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, near the Harvest Moon. Families gather to admire the moon and share mooncakes; Korea's Chuseok and Japan's tsukimi are related harvest-moon observances.
The vaudeville couple Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth introduced the song in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908, and it became a standard. It fixed the Harvest Moon in American popular culture as a moon for courting and singing on a porch.
The Harvest Moon has a precise meaning: it is the full moon nearest the autumn equinox, around September 22 or 23, so it can fall up to two weeks on either side of that date. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the phrase from 1706. In most years the moon rises about 50 minutes later each night, but around this time NASA notes the gap shrinks to roughly 25 to 30 minutes across the northern United States, because the moon's path makes a shallow angle with the evening horizon.
That run of bright early evenings gave farmers extra light to bring in crops, which is the usual explanation for the name. The 1937 Maine Farmers' Almanac put Harvest first among its fall moons. The Harvest Moon is not unusually large or orange; it often looks that way because it is seen low near the horizon at moonrise, through more of the atmosphere.
The folk rites of the end of harvest: the last sheaf cut and woven into a corn dolly or neck, carried home with shouting, and kept until spring, followed by the harvest supper. Mabon is a modern Pagan name for the autumn equinox, coined around 1970.
Setting a table of round foods, mooncakes and fruit under the full moon of the eighth lunar month to honor the moon and Chang'e and to pray for the family to be whole.
Customs held at the two equinoxes, when day and night are about equal: the Japanese Buddhist Higan week of grave visits and ohagi sweets, and the Persian new year Nowruz at the spring equinox. Modern Pagans use the days for balance rites.
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