Also called wishing on a falling star, meteor wish
Make a wish in the second or two that a meteor streaks across the night sky. The custom is widespread, though its often-quoted ancient origin is shaky.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Watch from a safe place, not a roadside, and dress warmly; let someone know where you are if you go somewhere remote at night.
In Yorkshire a falling star was a good sign, thought to be the soul of a baby coming down from heaven. Seeing one was welcome news rather than a moment to ask for something.
In Romania each person had a star like a life candle, and a falling one meant someone had died. Here the meteor called for a prayer rather than a wish.
The song from Pinocchio fixed the idea of wishing on a star in modern minds, though it refers to a steady star rather than a meteor.
Many websites say the custom began with the astronomer Ptolemy in 2nd-century Egypt, who supposedly taught that gods peering down from the heavens knocked stars loose, making it a good moment to be heard. No passage in Ptolemy's surviving works has been produced to support this, and it should be treated as a modern retelling. Real meteor folklore is varied: stars as rising or falling souls in Greek thought, fallen angels in Jewish and Christian lore, and good or bad omens in Australian Aboriginal traditions studied by Duane Hamacher.
Before the early 1800s European scientists thought meteors were weather, like lightning. Their link to space dust and comet debris was worked out in the 19th century, partly after the great Leonid storm of 1833. The wish custom itself is folk belief that grew in Europe and North America and was popularised further by the 1940 Disney song. Its brief, random timing is what gives it charm: a wish ready at hand.
Tanabata is Japan's Star Festival on the seventh day of the seventh month, honouring the weaver Orihime and the herdsman Hikoboshi, lovers who meet once a year across the Milky Way. People write wishes on narrow paper strips called tanzaku and hang them on bamboo.
Make a silent wish and blow out all the candles on your birthday cake in one breath; if they all go out, the wish comes true. The custom took shape at German children's birthdays in the 1700s.
Make a wish and blow the white seed head of a dandelion; if every seed flies in one breath, the wish is said to come true. The same puffs were once counted to tell the time or ask about love.
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