Fun fact: the monikers used for these children in the book are used in coloquial speech to describe children that misbehave or exhibit behavioral discrepencies:

• shock headed Peter: an unkempt, filthy child
• fidgety Philip: ADHS or hyperactive child
• Johnny-Head-in-the-Air: daydreaming, absent mindedness
• wicked Frederick: cruelty to animals (sociopathy, lack of empathy often reveal themselves this way early on)
• Soup Caspar: eating disorder, perhaps
• etc

The original book was written by a medical doctor dealing with children, go figure!

That but it was also just a depiction closer to reality: for instance famine and starvation were a common theme in Grimm’s collection of tales (Hänsel & Gretel, the star money, etc). But in the modern world [industrialized west] we know longer have a direct cultural experience of it.

Similarly gone down have:

• corporal punishment, mutilation (the girl without hands, Cinderella)
• indentured servitude, slavery (Rumpelstilzchen)
• cannibalism (Hänsel & Gretel); note that this in the context of a famine
• austerity at old age (the Bremen town musicians)
• despots abusing their power (Snow White)
• maternal death, parental absence (Cinderella, Snow White)
• child labor (Cinderella, Mother Hulda)

Can we appreciate #7?

In this vein I love how companies even spin up entire domains with affiliate links like top10airfryers.net or bestvacuumcleaners2024.com.

And then there source for the ratings is Amazon customer reviews or even the manufacturer’s online shop 🙄.

There’s both practical and more spiritual/philosophical reasons for this.

Before artificial light sources, especially electrical ones, moon light let people stay productive longer whilst outside. This was especially important for comunal activities like hunting, harvests or celebrations too. Keeping track of moon cycles is thus valuable for preparation in scheduling. And once you do that it can also be used to organize other social events around that. Similar to how our modern calendars and schedules are built around important fixed events.

The moon and sun as celestial bodies also gained prominent religious and mystical significance in ancient cultures. Remember that people didn’t actually know what the moon or sun were in the modern scientific sense. But for some strange reason these mystical glowing disks on which people were so reliant kept rising with unerring synchronicity. The inquiry into the movements on the firmament lead many a civilization down the paths of observation, record keeping and math too.