Groundhog Day

On Thursday, February 2, 2023, America celebrated Groundhog Day. This year at Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil left his burrow and saw his shadow, which, according to folklore, means there will be six more weeks of winter.

Groundhog day occurs once a year, when a groundhog leaves its burrow to predict whether we’ll have an early spring or a longer winter.

This tradition came to be in the Middle Ages through a belief that animals like badgers and bears paused their hibernation to appear on this day. Romans had a Christian holiday called Candlemas. On this day, clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter season would be. This custom was brought to Germany where they expanded on this concept using hedgehogs. The legend came to America as a result of German immigrants and the tradition changed from a hedgehog to a groundhog. 

In 1887, the celebration was founded by a newspaper editor in Punxsutawney named Clymer Freas, who was a part of a groundhog hunting team called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. The group designated Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, as its official meteorologist.

Today, the celebration of Groundhog Day is led by a group called the Inner Circle every year on February 2. The date marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. The members of the Inner Circle wear top hats and speak in a Pennsylvanian Dutch accent. If the day is sunny and the groundhog sees his shadow, tradition says we’ll have an extended winter, and if it’s cloudy and the groundhog doesn’t see its shadow, we’ll have an early spring.

Champions of Groundhog Day claim that Phil has never been wrong. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, however, Punxsutawney Phil has been correct only 40% of the time in the last ten years. He was correct about his predictions in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2020.

Meanwhile, there are many other rival groundhogs across America besides Punxsutawney Phil, such as Staten Island Chuck, who lives in the Staten Island Zoo. Chuck has been making weather predictions since 1981, and, unlike Phil, he was correct last year about an early spring. Chuck and Phil have had different predictions eight times since 2008. Chuck was only wrong twice out of eight of those times. He is known to have an accuracy rate of 80%, according to the New York Daily News.

Most people wonder why we celebrate Groundhog Day every year, and everyone has different reasons. Many people find that an animal predicting the weather is humorous, but celebrate out of respect for tradition and because of wishful thinking that they will be rescued from the dreariness of the cold winter months. At the very least, Groundhog Day reminds us that we should respect nature and everything around us.