I'll try again. I'm not concerned about the arbitrariness of the term 'supermoon'. I dislike the meaningless of it. A good term has meaning behind it. The choice of the new year is arbitrary, and has changed over the centuries. We can examine why there is a calendar system, and compare sun-based to moon-based calendar systems. We can understand that the turnover point of the Gregorian or Mayan calendar is arbitrary, and for the more recent calendar systems we know some of the reasons for why they exist.

Similarly, there's an intrinsic difference between a 'nova' and a 'supernova'.

But if you look at 'supermoon', all you get is a number pulled out of a hat.

> I think that's in the same category as choosing to look at the moon together and feel a sense of awe.

Does the awe really come from someone telling you the moon is near perigee? Or from other aspects?

It's a temporal coincidence that the perigee moon now is near the full moon. In another decade, the perigee moon will be around the new moon. Will we be having the same coverage of the topic then? I doubt it.

Perhaps an analogy might help. People choose to believe in a 'Saturn return'. But 'Saturn return' for arbitrary reasons includes the time +/- a couple of Earth years around a full Saturn year. I can still express my dislike for the term and concept even if you are in awe to know that you are one, or two, or even three Saturn years old.

Maybe we should just start celebrating Mercury retrograde ourselves.

It's Mercury retrograde, and it's time to celebrate math and science and reflect on the past! Long ago, humans looked up and it was pretty obvious everything revolved around the Earth. But then a few things go backwards at regular intervals, what's up with that? Explained by gods, by platonic solids, by complicated cosmic gears, it was a long standing puzzle. But after much puzzling, there was a realization that everything is much simpler and makes more sense if the sun is the center of the solar system, leading to the predictive physics that drives technology today! Quite the revolution -- and that's no accidental pun, it's the origin of this secondary meaning of the word "revolution".

How inspiring -- let's not let this inspiration go to waste, let's use it to reflect on our past relationships in our own lives, to revisit our past conclusions and see them in a new light, to have compassion for our past selves who had not yet not acquired the knowledge we have now.

And while we're at it, let's celebrate the discovery that gravity is a force that drops off extremely fast -- proportional to the square of the distance between two objects. Great news for us, because it means there is less gravitational attraction between me and Mercury when Mercury is closest than there is between me and the person sitting next to me, giving me plenty of opportunity to look at Mercury and be affected only by its light and the thoughts it inspires in me rather than hurled out of the solar system or into the Sun.