How Groundhog Day Began
Groundhog Day is coming up fast, that day when crowds of people go to Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and wait to see if that little groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not, letting people know whether winter is over or they’ve got six more weeks of Hell to live through. But, let’s be honest, groundhogs aren’t exactly known for their skills as meteorologists, and the track record of the current fortune telling groundhog is not so great with only a 39 percent rate of making the correct prediction. So then how did this rather silly tradition get started?
It all started with the pagans. February marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, so those crazy pagans would throw a party around Feb. 2nd to celebrate the beginning of spring. They believed that if the day was sunny and bright, spring wasn’t going to come quickly, but if the day was dreary, it was well on its way. Christians eventually adapted the holiday to fit their own traditions, and Europeans began watching animal hibernation patterns around the same time to try and predict the weather. Germans are the ones that brought the tradition of studying a badger on Feb. 2nd to see if it came out of its hole or not, and the Pennsylvania Dutch are the people responsible for changing the animal to a groundhog (likely because the animal was very common in that area). The event of watching for Punxsutawney Phil on Feb. 2nd became official in 1887.
Do you usually watch Groundhog Day television coverage to see if winter is over or not? Do you believe the tradition can really predict upcoming weather?