Hair, births and feasts: folk beliefs about the Moon in Italy
Italian and European folk beliefs about the Moon: waxing and waning, haircuts and births, moonlight on sleeping children, Sister Moon and the date of Easter.
Throughout Italy, from the Alps to Sicily, the Moon was for centuries a constant presence in daily life. Her phases governed not only the farming calendar but also small gestures such as cutting one's hair, bottling wine or choosing the day for a journey. Scholars of popular traditions, from the nineteenth century onwards, collected a vast repertoire of lunar beliefs, many of them shared with the rest of Europe and already attested in ancient sources.
The waxing Moon and the waning Moon
The most widespread principle was simple: what you want to grow should be done under a waxing Moon, what you want to hold back under a waning Moon. Thus, according to tradition, hair cut during the waxing Moon would grow back thicker, while hair cut during the waning Moon would be slow to grow again. Similar reasoning applied to nails, to the shearing of sheep and even to choosing the day on which to begin a job or close a deal.
The logic is ancient. Latin writers on agriculture, such as Cato and Columella, already linked the phases of the Moon to tasks like felling timber and sowing, and over the centuries the same principle was applied to personal care and to the household. Prescriptions of this kind are found in the almanacs printed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and in the oral memory collected by folklorists in a great many Italian regions.
Births and moonlight
Another great field of belief concerned birth. In many parts of Italy it was said that births were more frequent at the change of the Moon, especially at full moon, and that the lunar phase could even foretell the sex of the unborn child. Traditional midwives were the keepers of this oral knowledge. Modern statistical studies have not confirmed a link between lunar phases and the number of births, but the belief remains widespread.
Equally widespread was a distrust of moonlight. In various parts of Europe it was thought unwise to leave children asleep under the rays of the full moon, or to sleep outdoors exposed to its light, because it was believed it could disturb sleep and the mind. This idea is directly connected with the history of the word «lunatic» and with the ancient conviction that the Moon acted upon the humours of the body and upon the brain.
Sister Moon and popular faith
The Moon also entered popular religion. In the Canticle of the Creatures, composed by Francis of Assisi around 1225, we read «Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars»: the Moon is a sister there, a creature among creatures, far from the pagan deities. The liturgical calendar itself depends on her: Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full moon of spring, according to the ecclesiastical reckoning, and many other feasts move with it.
Alongside official faith there survived nursery rhymes and greetings addressed to the Moon, recited by children or by the elderly at the sight of the new moon. Many of these chants, collected in the nineteenth century by scholars such as Giuseppe Pitrè in Sicily, mix Christian elements with remnants of an almost personal relationship with the light of the night, treated as a familiar presence to whom one addressed affectionate words, good wishes and small requests.
These beliefs should not be dismissed as mere superstitions, but read as testimonies of a world in which time was measured by the sky. The Moon, visible to all and regular in her cycle, offered a natural clock and a source of shared meanings, which have left deep traces in the language, the festivals and the daily gestures of generations of Italians.