Claiming Groundhog Day

Last night, in the little two-dollar-a-beer smoking bar in Pennsylvania where I sometimes meet my brother and his buddies for a drink, everyone was debating the best way to haul a hot tub halfway across the state. Groundhog Day was in two days, and one of the regulars was driving his RV out with his girlfriend, all the way to Gobbler’s Knob, to see Punxsutawney Phil emerge from his hibernal slumbers – to see him either release us into an early spring or condemn us to six more weeks of winter.

For non-American readers and the hopelessly out of touch, Groundhog Day is folk tradition that holds that groundhogs emerging from hibernation can predict the length of the remaining winter: if the groundhog does not see his shadow, spring will come early; if he does, we will have six more weeks of winter. The tradition purportedly came with the Pennsylvania Dutch when they fled religious persecution in Germany, where bears, badgers, and hedgehogs were variously held to predict the advent of spring. In America, the hedgehog was replaced by the groundhog – or, in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the grundsow.

The first time my great-uncle let me fire his gun, he told me there is a season for everything, but I could always shoot groundhogs, anywhere, anytime. His Pennsylvania Dutch neighbors would occasionally ask him over as a favor, to do target practice on the podgy little mammals. The groundhog is hated, reviled, and killed for his produce-thieving, his tunnels, and his ankle-breaking holes. But one day of the year, he is adored.

Punxsutawney Phil, Groundhog Day, 2022, Pennsylvania. Photograph by Anthony Quintano. Creative Commons.

In 1886, The Groundhog Club of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, formalized the rite. They captured a wild groundhog (doubtless, like the medieval unicorn, through an act of terrible betrayal). After hunting groundhogs as pests throughout the year, on February 2 they would don top hats, rouse their special pampered hog, Punxsutawney Phil, from sleep, and hold him up to greet the sun.

The ceremony must have worked at least some social magic, because Punxsutawney went from a site of a minor folk tradition to the site of a national, if minor, holiday. Today, a crowd converges on Gobbler’s Knob every year, in RVs and trucks and cars, to party until dawn breaks and the men in top hats enact the ceremony. The celebration has an official beer sponsor (Sam Adams, which is insulting) and a motion picture (Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, which is bleakly charming), surely the two ultimate proofs of having made it in America.

There are people who see in every popular celebration creeping paganism. Christmas is the major target, and while I can respect the fact that it takes real guts to protest such a universally beloved mass phenomenon, I think they’re wrong. With Groundhog Day, though, they might seem to have a case: After all, here’s a ritual where an animal predicts, if not causes, the weather. He both governs and personifies the ancient, endless turn from winter to spring. He is immortal – according to the Groundhog Club, the same Punxsutawney Phil has been predicting the advent of spring for almost two hundred years. And, in perhaps the most telling sign that we are dealing with a neopagan phenomenon, despite alleged links to medieval practices, the whole thing in its current form was started by men in the late 1880s who wanted an excuse to wear silly outfits.

But if the usual complaints about paganism hinge on the supposed pagan roots of Christian festal traditions, Groundhog Day goes in the other direction. Groundhog Day occurs on February Second every year because the animal weather lore involved was originally a Candlemas tradition.

So, what should we do with this looney Christian-derived, pagan-inflected, secular phenomenon? Must we eschew RVs and hot tubs, Gobbler’s Knob and top hats? Must we shun the hog?

Candlemas has lost the significance it once had; for most people Groundhog Day is all that’s left. Candlemas commemorates the presentation of Jesus at the Temple described in Luke 2. In the Liturgy of the Hours, the prophet Simeon’s words upon encountering Christ are repeated every night: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel.”

Some things fall into place when you know this. The groundhog is not a god, he is an image of the prophet, telling a people who have been walking in darkness what he has seen. The groundhog sees the coming of spring; Simeon sees the dawn breaking, the spring coming. Of course, there’s a difference: the groundhog’s vision is occluded – he sees his shadow not the sun – while the prophet he sees the light with his own eyes, a revelation and a glory that will bring about salvation. And the groundhog’s spring will inevitably be followed by another winter, while the prophet sees a new spring once and for all, for all mankind.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s punishment for being a cynical hedonist is to repeat the same day, over and over, without advancing to the next. His punishment is to experience the tragic futility of temporality, which Christianity and its promise of salvation makes irrelevant. No matter how stupid Murray’s character thinks Groundhog Day is, he has chosen to live within the groundhog’s world, and only escapes the cycle when he realizes this.

So, what should we do with this looney Christian-derived, pagan-inflected, secular phenomenon? Must we eschew RVs and hot tubs, Gobbler’s Knob and top hats? (We should certainly eschew Sam Adams for Pennsylvania’s own Yuengling). Must we shun the hog?

I think not.

Sometimes you doubtless have to cut down a sacred oak, but in my books it’s better to consecrate it. This is our Father’s world, not the demons’ or even the powers and principalities’; everything in it belongs to him.

I would simply restore Groundhog Day to its place as a Candlemas celebration. Medieval Europeans had their way of doing things, we Pennsylvanians have ours. Drive out to Gobbler’s Knob and party all night. See the groundhog greet the dawn and then go to church and hear the word read. Then, finally, collapse into bed, having seen the salvation of the world.