One of the most essential tropes of Christmas movies is the shot of Santa Claus and his physics-defying reindeer dashing in front of a full Moon. That angle of the gift-giving vigilante and his quadruped minions shows up dozens of times, from Prancer to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
But despite this festive image’s ubiquity, it’s very rare for a full Moon to actually coincide with Christmas. This year, however, for the first time since 1977, a full Moon will grace the skies on Christmas Day, scheduled to reach its zenith at 6:11 AM Eastern time. That should inspire some bonus holiday spirit in even the Grinchiest of Scrooges, or end up triggering a few Christmas werewolves, as Stephen Colbert predicted.
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Video: The Late Show With Stephen Colbert/YouTube
The event got me thinking about the dozens of past full Moon Christmases that have gone by since the mythical first Noel went down in Bethlehem. Naturally, one thing led to another, and I ended up searching through over 2,000 years of Moon phase records just to track them all down. These things happen.
Thanks to the meticulously organized website AstroPixels, run by eclipse expert and astrophysicist Fred Espenak, it was a surprisingly easy project. And as it turns out, the Venn diagram of full Moons and Christmas actually makes for an interesting dataset of years to sift through, provided you can set aside the discrepancies between different timekeeping methods of older cultures.
By that I mean that Espenak’s records use the modern Gregorian calendar, so all the full Moons I cross-referenced occur on that timeline. But once you wade back a few centuries, timekeeping becomes much more fractured along cultural lines, with dates recorded in a panoply of conflicting calendars, such as the Julian, Hebrew, Islamic, Mayan, Hindu, or Zoroastrian calendars, among many others.
As an example, it has become popular in some secularist circles to celebrate Newtonmas instead of Christmas, given that Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642. But that birth date was recorded in the defunct Julian calendar. According to Gregorian timekeeping, Newton was born on January 4, 1643.
But since so much of Christmas centers on a willing suspension of disbelief, try not to let the calendric vagaries of the past distract too much from this ridiculously long list of full Moon Christmases.
Because it’s such a random parameter to place on a two-millennia period of time, there is a wide range of historically significant events paired against some little-known but fascinating moments. So here’s the master list, complete with annotations for particularly noteworthy events. After a certain point, events get lost in the haze of history, so there are a lot of blank spaces beyond the Medieval period. But feel free to write in to suggest any interesting points we missed!
Full-Moon Christmases of Future and Past:
2053: The end of World War III, according to Star Trek: First Contact. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see the full Moon on Christmas through the settling dust of apocalyptic nuclear warfare.
2034: If everything goes according to NASA’s plan, this is the year the first human Mars mission will be launched. No full Moon Christmases for those astronauts, though they will probably have a better view anyway.
2015: You will likely eat a lot on this day.
1977: Charlie Chaplin died. Also, Penn State beats Arizona State 42-30 at the seventh Fiesta Bowl in Arizona.
1920: The Rosicrucian Fellowship dedicates The Ecclesia, the Christian sect’s spiritual healing temple and headquarters, at Mount Ecclesia, Oceanside, California.
1901: A Boer commando launches a surprise attack against a British cavalry regiment known as the Battle of Groenkop, which resulted in a rapid British defeat. “More than 200 British soldiers were captured and it was reported that some of these men were dressed in women’s clothing,” according to the book Amelia’s Way. “The Boer commandos, who were not known for accommodating prisoners, stripped the men of their frilly garments and released them half naked into the veld.
However, other sources claim the whole cross-dressing thing was actually on the Boer side. “As one British prisoner of war stated after, some of their Boer captors were so short on clothing that they were wearing women’s clothing,” according to this South African tourism site. “But despite their attire, the Boers defeated the British soldiers after climbing Groenkop barefoot at 02:00 on Christmas morning 1901.”
Either way, it’s likely that there was more than one full Moon out that day. (I’m talking about British and/or Boer butts.)
1863: The New York Times published an article commending African-American soldiers for their valor in fighting the American Civil War.
1825: Russian army officials in Saint Petersburg prepare for the Decemberist revolt against Tsar Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne.
Painting of the Decemberist revolt. Image: Vasily Timm
1806: Christian Luswanger of the New York City Watch was stabbed to death in the line of duty during a gang riot.
1795: Charles Simms of Alexandria, Virginia, applied for an appointment as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
1776: George Washington crosses the Delaware river in a surprise assault against Hessian forces.
George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day, with the full Moon in the background. Image: Emanuel Leutze/ Metropolitan Museum of Art
1757: Some dude named Moses Sanborn was born in Epsom, Connecticut, according to this state genealogy book. He moved to Vermont, had a bunch of kids, and died in 1837.
1711: Violinist and composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville is baptised in Narbonne, France. Apparently one of his peers had this to say of him: “If I couldn’t be Rameau, there’s no one I would rather be than Mondonville.” What a great Enlightenment-Age neg.
1681
1662: Naval administrator and statesman Samuel Pepys went to a lackluster Christmas sermon, ate plum-pudding and roasted pullet for dinner, and comforted his sick wife, according an entry in his diary.
1643: Captain William Mynors of the English East India Trading Company finds and names Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Isaac Newton turns one.
1605: Marino Grimani, the 89th Doge of Venice, dies. Such Doge. Many Venetians. So magistrates. Wow.
1586: Queen Elizabeth mobilizes her fleet at Portsmouth in response to the Babington Plot to assassinate her.
1577: Captain Francis Drake glimpses the African Barbary Coast from his ship The Golden Hind.
1558:
1539
1528: Auto da feira, a play by Portuguese troubadour Gil Vicente, is performed for the first time.
1482
1463: The moralist, judge, and translator Johann of Schwarzenberg was born.
1444: Bishop of Worcester John Carpenter settles into his new digs at the town’s cathedral.
1425
1406: The coronation of King John II of Castile, who was only an infant at the time.
1387: Some historians think that this particular Christmas full Moon inspired the background of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Franklin’s Tale,” due to the references to high tides.
The Franklin’s Tale illustration, with high tides in the background. Image: Mary Eliza Haweis
1349
1292
1273
1254: Pope Alexander IV is getting used to his papal duties in the wake of his predecessor’s death on December 12.
1216: England is in the midst of a civil war after Prince John of Lackland (yes, the Robin Hood one) dies in October.
1170: Saint Thomas of Canterbury lives out the final days before his assassination, which went down on December 29, 1170.
1151
1140
1121: The Dutch Roman Catholic bishop Norbertus van Xanten founds the religious order of the Norbertijnen.
1075
1037
1018
999: Christianity, along with Christmas itself, is adopted in Iceland.
942
904
885
866: A force known alternately as the Great Viking Army or the Great Heathen Army establishes their stronghold in York, England.
847
828
809
763
752
733
714
630
611
600: By this time, Hawaii has been settled by Polynesian explorers, likely from the Marquesas Islands.
535
516: According to the Welsh Annals, this is the year King Arthur won the Battle of Badon for the Britons, against the invading Saxons. Arthur was said to have “carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulder [meaning his shield] and the Britons were the victors.” Pretty badass.
497
478
459: At five years old, the future Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great spends his first winter as a child hostage in Constantinople.
421
402
364
345
326: Saint Nino brings Christianity to Georgia.
307
288
223
212: Emperor Caracalla extends citizenship to nearly all of the people amassed under Roman rule with the Constitutio Antoniniana. Other than this edict, he was a real dickish brat though.
109
90
71: The Roman Imperial Army is on its way to squash the Jewish rebellion at Masada.
60: A British revolt against Roman rule led by Boudica, the warrior queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe, is in full swing.
14: A devastating famine is plaguing China’s Yellow River Basin, resulting in cannibalism among the peasantry.
