Bark at the moon?

On the fourth day God said, "'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years'" (Genesis1:14 NIV).

God set up our moon-driven calendar system on the fourth day of Creation, which Jewish history deduces was approximately 5768 years ago, as that is the current Jewish year. So the Jewish people have maintained the Hebrew calendar system, while the world saw fit to revise this method--in order of development: Roman Calendar, Julian Calendar, and the now widely used, Gregorian Calendar.

While the Gregorian calendar is ruled by time alone, the Hebrew month is calculated by the phases of the moon.

So the beginning of each month (there are 12 months, 13 during leap year) is a new moon or Rosh Chodesh. The appointed holidays, for example, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, fall on the same day of the month every year as calculated by the moon. Yom Kippur, for instance, falls on the 10th day of Tishri (the 7th month) every year and Passover occurs on the 15th day of Nissan (the 1st month). But that has nothing to do with our secular calendar and so Yom Kippur can occur in September or October and Passover or Pesach can occur in March or April.

If you celebrate Easter, did you ever wonder why it could be early March one year and late April another? As Christian holidays are uncannily related to Jewish holidays, so their dates often coincide, as Christianity is really based on Judaism, right?

Wikipedia: Lunar Phase
Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary-Calendar

In the northern hemisphere, the crescent moon is visible on the right side of the moon on the 1st or 2nd day of the Hebrew month, then waxes to the left as the month progresses; in the southern hemisphere, the crescent is on the left, then waxes to the right. View the Current Moon phase--northern hemisphere.

The full moon is the middle of the month which is the 15th of the month. God appointed certain festivals where His people were to travel to Jerusalem to be on the 15th--Passover and the 1st day of Sukkot--so that the full moon would remind them it was time and the light would guide their pilgrimage.

So bark at the moon if you like--but don't sneeze at it (sorry, pathetically poor pun). God may have called it the "lesser light"(Genesis 1:16) but He gave it incredible power: to light the night, guide the time, determine His appointed times, control the tides. Non-sequitur alert: that reminds me that our bodies are 50-70% water.