DECEMBER - COLD MOON The Moon of December is also called Oak Moon, Wolf Moon, Moon of Long Nights, Long Night's Moon, Aerra Geola (Month Before Yule), Wintermonat (Winter Month), Heilagmanoth (Holy Month), Big Winter Moon, and Moon of Popping Trees. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Anglo-Saxon name for the month was Aerra Geola which means Month Before Yule. The Irish name for December is Mi na Nollag, which means Christmas Month. Many modern Pagans refer to the Full Moon nearest the Winter Solstice as the Oak Moon, the Moon of the newborn Year, the Divine Child. The ancient oak has its trunk and branches in the material world of the living, while its roots reach deep into the underworld. So like the Newborn Child and the oak, we too dwell simultan-ously in two worlds - the world of physical matter and the world of spirit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Old Sayings & Lore Never cut your hair, begin a journey, move into a new house, start a business, or cut out a dress on a Friday in particular, and especially if a New or Full Moon falls on a Friday. If you walk nine times around a faery rath or hill at the Full Moon, you will find the entrance. The name Mount St. Helens means "Moon Mountain." The word "create" comes from the same word-root as "crescent." The ancient Egyptians said that the Dark Moon and Full Moon were the two eyes of Horus. The horseshoe is a symbol of the lunar crescent. Certain ancient British coins had the horse and the crescent on them. For the horseshoe, and the Crescent Moon, to be lucky and hold the luck, the horns must be turned upward. The natives of Madagascar call their isle the Island of the Moon. The feldspar gem known as the moonstone is said to become brighter and clearer when the Moon is full. The eastern Eskimo clans claim their people came from the Moon to Earth. Burning bayberry candles on Yule, Christmas Eve, or New Year's Eve is a tradition that has been around for many years: "A bayberry candle Burned to the socket Brings food and larder And gold to the pocket." The origin of the Christmas tree is generally ascribed to Martin Luther of Germany, the 16th century reformer. But the German word for the Christmas tree is not Kristenbaum, as might be expected if that were true, but Tannenbaum, a word obviously related to Tinne or Glastin, the sacred trees of the ancient Celts. The earliest records of an evergreen being decorated comes from the city of Riga in Latvia in 1510 C.E., when a group of people belonging to a local merchants' guild carried an evergreen bedecked with artificial flowers to the market place, and in an obviously Pagan ritual, danced around it then set fire to it; a cross between the Christmas tree as we know it and the Yule log. The December birthstone is the turquoise: If cold December gave you birth, The month of ice and snow and mirth, Place on your hand a Turquoise blue, Success will bless whatever you do.