What is a “Cheshire Moon"?

8 May 2014

THE SHORT ANSWER (TSA)

 A Smiling Moon?

            What’s a Cheshire moon? Well, the answer starts in Hawaii and ends up in England. But let’s begin at the beginning.

In Hawaii and other places near the equator, the moon sometimes looks different than it does in the temperate and frigid zones. Because of the tilt of the earth, people living in the tropics see the face of the moon rotate during the course of year.

This is most noticeable when the moon is in crescent phase before the first and after the fourth quarter.  With December, the crescent moon seems to have fallen over on its side. When this happens, the moon looks like it has two horns.

To the ancient Hawaiians, the crescent moon seemed to form a bowl that caught and stored the water for the spring and summer rains. As the crescent tipped back over into the up and down position (crescent moon most of the rest of the world sees all the time) the Hawaiian rains poured. The rains would stop about the time the crescent moon had rotated to the upright position. In other words, the rains stopped when it looked like the bowl had been tipped and completely poured out.

But the “bowl” crescent doesn’t just look like a bowl. It also looks like a smile. A smile, without a face — just floating in the sky.

Who ever heard of something like that?

Well, anyone whose read Lewis G. Carol’s Alice in Wonderland will recognize the scene of “nothing but a smile” floating in the air.

In Carol’s book, Alice finds herself in Wonderland after either passing through a “looking glass” (mirror) to the other side (Wonderland), or falling down a rabbit hole. (Carol wrote two versions of the story.) In Wonderland, she meets a cat who later reappears in the branches of a tree.

 The "Friendly-Looking" Cheshire Cat?

Unlike a regular cat, this cat – “the Cheshire Cat”– can not only talk, but appears and disappears at will. This cat has the irritating habit of engaging Alice in confusing conversations, but its appearances and disappearances are made stranger by its ability to appear only partially. In one scene, the cat’s head appears without its body. In another the cat fades away until only its grin is visible. Alice observes that she has seen a cat without a grin before, but never a grin without a cat.

So, the floating grin of the Cheshire Cat became famous as it found its way into popular culture. So, much so, that when the crescent moon is tilted at an angle that makes it look like just a smile floating in the sky, some have called it a Cheshire Moon.

Mark Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri & Belleville, Illinois
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