Wolf Moon

The Wolf Moon is a name for the full moon that occurs in January. This name is popularly attributed to the Native Americans. According to popular culture this name was chosen because they heard hungry wolf packs howling outside the villages. This full moon is also known as the Old Moon or the Moon after Yule. There is a great deal of variation in the moon names around the world, but it is likely that the link between January and the wolf stems from the Scottish Gaelic term Faoilleach and it was later mistakenly attributed to local tribes. While the Farmer's Almanac attributes this to the Algonquin, the Algonquin name for that moon is squochee kesos or "sun has not strength to thaw". The Sioux do mention wolves in their name for January, which means "when wolves run together". However, they also refer to that moons as the "moon of the strong cold" or "frost in the teepee". Other tribes had different names for the moons. Since the lunar month is roughly 29.53 days long on the average, the full moon dates shift from year to year.