Wolf Moon

The Wolf Moon takes its name from the idea that wolves howl more in midwinter, when food is scarce. The explanation is folklore rather than biology: wolves howl year-round, and mostly to coordinate the pack and mark territory rather than out of hunger. The name persists because it is evocative, and because January in the northern hemisphere is exactly the month when a distant howl carries furthest across frozen ground.

“Moon After Yule” is the better documented of the two, though the almanacs overstate it slightly. What is actually attested is the month name: Bede records the Old English January as Æfterra Gēola, “After Yule”, one of a pair of Giuli months named — as he puts it — for the day when the sun turns back and begins to increase, one falling before it and one after. That is a solstice-relative reckoning rather than a Roman one, which is the interesting part; “Moon After Yule” is the almanac tradition’s rendering of it. The Ojibwe call the January moon Gichi-manidoo-giizis, the Great Spirit Moon, a period associated with quiet and reflection.

Astronomically, January is a good month for the full moon. Because the sun sits low in the winter sky, the full moon — which is always opposite the sun — rides correspondingly high, staying above the horizon for a long time and clearing the murk near the horizon. A January full moon is often the highest and longest-lasting of the year after December’s.

Also known as

• Moon After Yule
• Ice Moon
• Old Moon
• Great Spirit Moon

The 1778 record

Travelling among the Dakota in 1766 and 1767, Captain Jonathan Carver wrote down all twelve month names in a single passage. Published in 1778, it predates the almanac list by roughly a century and a half and is the oldest independent check on these names.