NavList:

Michael, you wrote:
"People keep telling me about the Solstice lunar eclipse and how it was the darkest night in years."

According to some reports, it was the first time that a total lunar eclipse had occurred on the solstice in centuries. I would like to see the standard chosen for that claim since there's an issue of what counts as "on" the solstice.

The expression "darkest night" party has caught on in recent years as an alternative label for a solstice party or festival. For folks in mid to high latitudes in the northern hemisphere, it suggests an actual reason for a party, as opposed to the word "solstice" which, for most people today, means nothing. The idea that the nights get shorter from now until late June is a concrete concept, easy to justify as something worth celebrating while winter continues to deepen. This year, with the lunar eclipse, apparently a few people got it in their heads that this would be an even darker "darkest night". But as you point out, a New Moon night would be much darker, and actually since the eclipse only lasted for a few hours, MOST of this year's darkest night had a brilliantly bright Full Moon hanging very high in the sky (as December Full Moons always do in the northern hemisphere).

You added:
"This media publicity seems to have taken on a life of its own."

I think what you're really seeing here is the power of the damned "fwd". This is classic "email forward" fodder; it's a gee-whiz factoid. It's also been picked up by some bloggers many of whom are essentially the same crowd. But if you go to Google News and search on "darkest night" there don't seem to be very many such references in anything that we would call mainstream media.

-FER

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