5 Ways To Celebrate Tonight’s Harvest Supermoon
I know it’s Monday and everyone’s like “UGH MONDAYS” but just hold onto your butts, as Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park would say, because this Monday night is going to TOTALLY make up for this Monday day. Know why? It’s going to be a HARVEST SUPERMOON MONDAY NIGHT.
“Wait, what’s a supermoon, again?” “How is a harvest supermoon different from a regular supermoon?” “This sounds like Halloween has come like a month early, what can I do to celebrate this awesome surprise autumnal holiday?”
Those are all such good questions to ask, or such good questions that I asked for you, whatever, it doesn’t matter, I’m still going to give you the answer rundown.
So basically, full moons vary in size because of the oval nature of the moon’s orbit around Earth. The point in the Earth and moon’s orbit when they are closest to each other (and look, that’s still like 150,000 miles away, so that’s not CLOSE but it’s CLOSER than it normally is) is called a perigee and bringing Earth and the moon that closer together is what creates a supermoon. The Harvest Moon is the closest full moon to the autumnal equinox (Tues, Sept 23rd this year). A Harvest Supermoon is a beautiful astronomical phenomenon, so let’s celebrate this impromptu holiday like the cauldron-stirring, broomsticks-for-transport-using little witches we all are inside our hearts.
Here are five ways you can celebrate tonight’s Harvest Supermoon.
1. Have a nighttime picnic
There is going to be SO MUCH MOONLIGHT tonight. “You can’t fight the moonlight,” LeAnn Rimes told us all that on the Coyote Ugly soundtrack. So don’t! Grab your picnic basket, brush the dust off your panini press, and get some people to come eat with you on some grass somewhere. Are you still trying to fight the moonlight? Don’t, you can’t, do I really have to get LeAnn to come over here and tell you why in song form?
2. Blast some tunes and dance outside
So back in the day (and probably still now out in the sticks somewhere) people celebrated the Harvest Moon by having a barn dance/hoe down. There was just so much LIGHT and you could actually SEE everyone else’s dance moves. So blast some jams and dance on your apartment balcony or in your backyard or on the sidewalk or drive somewhere cool, open all your doors and pump up your car stereo. Spooky moons are for dancing your brains out, just ask any witch EVER.
3. Go hang out at an observatory (or find a friend with a telescope)
When something happens in the night sky, this is EXACTLY the time to go to your local observatory (or your local friend-who-has-a-telescope’s-house) and look at the astronomical phenomena with like the help of SCIENCE AND STUFF! Plus, it’s so fun to gather with a bunch of strangers who are all nerding out about the same thing, be it a Hunger Games midnight movie showing or just the moon looking particularly weird tonight, there is solidarity in fangirl-ing out with the masses.
4. Find someone to kiss up a storm with
Both my brother and sister respectively attended/are attending Stanford University (they are the smart siblings and I am the fun sibling) (kidding, they are the smart and fun siblings and I don’t even KNOW what kind of sibling I am) and at Stanford they have a tradition where on the first full moon of fall quarter, people go to the quad and, you know, make out. I’m SUPER into the idea of kissing under a crazy moon. I’m going to have to figure out some way to trick my hubs into coming outside with me to make out tonight when he’s super comfortable inside watching Nathan For You on Hulu (again, kidding, it’s going to be him trying to get me out of the house while I’m comfortably watching the Bachelor in Paradise season finale).
5. Take a (super) moonlit drive or stroll
Maybe all this kissing and picnic-going and impromptu-dance-party-throwing is all a little much for you, but you can still go for a drive (hayrides are popular supermoon modes of transport, but you’ll be fine in your regs car) or just walk down the street in the moonlight and enjoy nature in all her prettiness!
