For most of you reading this, the Full Moon on Friday will be the first to take place on Christmas day since 1977. That’s nearly four decades. By most human standards 38 years is a long time — enough for a lot of metaphorical water to have passed under the proverbial bridge.
Adding extra meaning is that any Full Moon on Dec. 25 would (by definition) oppose the Capricorn Sun from Cancer — the water sign where the Moon rules supreme.
Hence, what we have coming up is a day with meaning for nearly anybody. It will be a major holiday, wrapped in astronomical significance inside of an implicitly powerful astrological event. By all indications then, it must be time to at least evaluate all that has taken place since there was last a Full Moon for Christmas, nearly half of an average human lifetime ago.
Jimmy Carter was spending his first Christmas as President of the U.S. in 1977. In many ways, it’s encouraging that he is still alive. Of course, there are many who have transitioned from earthly life since then. The cinema pioneer Charlie Chaplin, for example, passed away only hours before the Moon was precisely full over his Swiss home on the morning of Dec. 25, 1977.
Under the Christmas tree of more affluent households in 1977 you might have found one of the first home computers or gaming consoles. If you were in the U.S. and poor, Christmas dinner may have been made possible by food stamps.
Were you to go out for a holiday movie back then, you might have seen the very first Star Wars film (released in May, but still in some theaters at the end of the year). Or perhaps you would have gone to see Saturday Night Fever, which played a big role in disco going mainstream. Punk rock and improvisational artists rapping along to accompaniment by DJs and their rudimentary turntable setups were also emerging from the cultural underground into wider (and ever more commercial) popularity at that time.
Were you to look up at the Cancer Full Moon on Christmas night of 1977, it would have been a pretty sight with Jupiter right next to it in a Cancer conjunction. Contemplating that tableau, you might have been thinking about the two Voyager spacecraft launched earlier that year on their way to a grand tour of our solar system to take close-ups of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Or you may even have been among the few musing on Chiron, which was discovered less than two months beforehand.
For the Cancer Full Moon coming up on Friday morning at 6:11 am EST (11:11 UTC), Jupiter will once again be in the sky with it, but further East in Virgo. You will also have reason to think about the two Voyager spacecraft once again, as both are still working and sending us data from the edge of interstellar space. Chiron, in the interim, has earned a column of its own alongside the sign-ruling planets in the online Swiss Ephemeris — which is a pretty darned amazing distinction.
Because the parallels between the Cancer Full Moon of Dec. 25, 1977 and the one coming up on Friday are many and compelling, it may very well be worth your while to make some comparisons of your own. This is not just any Full Moon. It is one of those rare events featuring an astrological return in confluence with astronomy, the civil calendar, popular culture, economics, technology, art and ancient mysteries all looping around to intersect in ways that indicate, to any thoughtful person, that it must be time for something.
Precisely what it’s time for will be your privilege to help determine, because you have the good fortune to be alive now. Regardless of how you feel about Christmas, you might want to accept the gift of that privilege and put it to some good use. These days must certainly, in some way, be made into a special time by — and for — you.
Offered In Service
Yes, yes, yes! You are so right, Len. It is time. And I am grateful for the miracle of life … AND Pluto helping me focus on home, the real thing. It is such a joy to witness creation and meet others with such love in their hearts.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and BIG Love to you, Len, and all those who read/learn/love here.
m.
I had such fun editing this piece — the correlations really are fascinating to ponder!
Further information on the lunation cycle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonic_cycle
True to form, there was a Full Moon on Dec 24, 1996 at 15:39 EST.
Oh, what fun to know! Thanks, Amy. Christmas 1996 the Christmas I was living in London. I’d just stopped working at this horridly stressful, posh bar and grill in Piccadilly Circus where half the managers and staff were coke addicts. I think the night before Christmas Eve was probably my last night there.
Either on Boxing Day or the day after, I boarded an overnight coach to Glencoe, Scotland, where I worked at a pub and inn for a couple weeks over Hogmanay — feeling relaxed and back within myself for the first time in a few months, surrounded by snow-dusted hills and lots of trees and wonderful brogues.
I ended my high school years, left home, met husband #1. It was the beginning of more than a chapter- which now seems history. Now, a new series of adventures need to be lived and written in memory. It must be time 🙂
I well remember the personal context of that 1977 Christmas full moon – & the first Star Wars, when my daughter was just nine. We loved the movie.
And I have never forgotten a spectacular Christmas full moon in 1958, when I walked out to the corral/barn through the brilliant blue-white night, to visit the cattle & pat my beloved horse. I was 13, & there was still magic in the world.
I’m not sure what this imminent full moon will have to say to me, but I am doing my best to listen. I like the thought that the Voyager spacecraft are still out there, doing their thing, as I endeavour to do mine during the quiet of a village Christmas weekend.
Thank-you for the reflections, Len – & to all at PW who celebrate at this time, & to those who don’t, many blessings.
Awesome Len! You have woven a true tale that spans years and lives.
Thank you, Len, I do enjoy your writings at Planet Waves, so full of insight and subtle feelings. They nearly always make me think, and pause, and often change some of my approaches to life, which is very healthy. Joyeux Noël!
Merry Christmas Eve Len, and all Planet Wavers. I don’t have a clue as to details of Christmas in 1977, except that I would have spent it with my family in Frankfort, Kentucky. It was before my dad died and before my mom moved to Kansas City to live near my brother’s family. The Christmas holiday gatherings I would be part of ceased (for me) for good in the early 80’s because I didn’t like to fly (airplanes that is) in the winter, and after a few years of “independence” it became my preferred holiday mode of operation. I guess having Chiron conjunct natal Sun makes me a bit of a maverick that way. Ever since then I’ve been gradually moving away from many of the traditions I grew up with, odd for a Cancerian I know.
So when I look back a bunch of decades it seems like a different lifetime. I remember the events you speak of here but don’t associate them with family as much as I would where I was working and who my associations were with. In 1977 I was no longer majoring in marriages (just wasn’t suited to it) and was a few years into the healthcare business (but not as a health care worker per se) where I would spend almost 30 years. It changed my life. Truly.
Now my life (style) is a whole ‘nuther chapter; retired, paling around with women young enough to be my kids (who are at least as screwed up as I was at their age) and finally liking who I am and how I live life. Much of that I must thank the computer age, the Internet and blogs like yours for Len. Who would have thought in 1977 that in 2015 we all would be communicating clear across the continent and across oceans with great folks we would probably never meet but who’s interesting stories would broaden our understanding of what life was like outside of our own communities.
Raise your hand if that’s true for you too. For the majority of us the world has become a much smaller place than it was back then. Not just the Internet, but television has grown too, and the connections between people with cell/smart phones has made it an even more intimate world. I am much more a global citizen (in my own eyes) than of just my city or state. The U.S.A. is like my big sister (both born on the 4th of July). Now that transiting Jupiter has crossed my 7th house cusp (and is conjunct my big sister’s Neptune) the boundaries – between time and between space – are vanishing. Is it just me or is all mankind feeling kinda global?
Well, either way, this is going to be a very special Christmas indeed. The Full Moon conjuncts my big sister’s Venus, and with trans. Jupiter conjunct her Neptune, she’s in a pretty good mood these days. Hope we can say the same for you too Len. Happy holidays.
be
Len I was so happy to read your post because we left Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) in bright sunshine on the 21 Dec (1977) and landed in the rain and grey and gloom and concrete and inner silence at Heathrow on the 22. Of course I can now tell you I appreciate the subtlety of England, perhaps even more than the frankness of Africa (tho I am glad to live in the French mountains at our African altitude), and I am European and glad to be. But if ever misery strikes it is at this period, so I’ll look at the charts. Thank you so much.
Thank you Len, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! Another great piece to ponder, and I hear that the next full moon to appear on Christmas day will take about just as long as this one did. Thirty-eight years ago, in so many respects seems like a life-time, I even wonder sometimes if that young rebellious teenager really was me! So many choices and consequences ago. It was the year after America had celebrated her bicentennial and for some reason this really stays in my mind, perhaps its because I lived in one of the original thirteen colonies at that time- Virginia. Martinia Navratilova beat Chrissy Everett at Wimbleton and Nancy Lopez was winning a lot of LPGA tournaments but it was also the time of Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson and Muhammad Ali.
As I thought about it, a lot of strife was occurring in the world. A great deal of Pres. Carter’s attention was focused on the Middle East, Ayatollah Khoemeini rose after the fall of the Shah of Iran and plenty of bombings ensued. Pollution and the embers of civil rights were burning, but laws were also being passed providing stronger protection especially following egregious incidents including the Amoco Cadiz oil spill off the coast of Brittany and the facts leading up to Roe v Wade. The Equal Rights Amendment was a strong topic of discussion at this time as it was being debated in Congress. Also, the race into space was still a strong desire by the largest world powers, but it was the Russians that continued to pursue that vision. And, unfortunately, that nation did not find solitude in its desire to test nuclear prowess as many nations were doing that often. So, this was a time of earth and human rights being debated and expanded in the forefront of the nuclear age. It will be interesting to consider what this next three decades or so will bring.
Tonight I spent some time looking at that magnificent moon, I felt its awe and majesty. I had the sense of reaching, leaning towards the cosmos, perhaps this may be the way man decides to go next. Only time will tell. Happy Holidays to all!