As a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, there are a few state treasures you come to revere, like Tastykake's Butterscotch Krimpets, a 64-pack of Crayola crayons with a sharpener on the back of the box, soft pretzels and Hershey's chocolate. But no locally-produced treat could touch the majesty of the state's ultimate icon: Punxsutawney Phil.
Groundhog Day always felt so exciting to me as a kid. Even though I grew up hundreds of miles from Punxsutawney, I remember approaching the holiday with the same bottled-up hope of a possible snow day. I always wished Phil would see his shadow and we'd be in for more snow, days spent outside on sleds and evenings indoors with hot chocolate. And for most of my childhood, Phil delivered, with predictions of long winters — though it took me a while, maybe longer than others, to realize his predictions didn't amount to much scientifically. But I still loved the suspense at the heart of the holiday, and the question: What will Punxsutawney Phil predict for the rest of the season?
I'll be the first to admit that Groundhog Day is also a weird holiday (and some may quibble that it isn't a holiday at all). There's the pomp and circumstance, the top hats and tuxedos, and the myth that there is only one Punxsutawney Phil, who has been making weather predictions since the 1880s. And it definitely takes the cake for the holiday with the most rodent-themed merch. But for all its delightful strangeness, Groundhog Day is also a rarity among American holidays.
Take a look at an American cultural calendar, and you will find that the majority of our biggest holidays are in service to our national myth-making. We commemorate our independence from foreign power, and the emancipation of enslaved people. We remember our military achievements and fallen soldiers, and honor towering American figures like George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.
A number of cultures and religions leave their mark, too, with popular celebrations of Mardi Gras, Passover, Ramadan and Christmas dotting the year. But Groundhog Day is the only popular American holiday that explicitly celebrates our relationship with nature and reliance on the delicate balance of the seasons.
Though many Americans observe holidays that coincide with major seasonal shifts — Halloween and Diwali near the midpoint of autumn; Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa close to the winter solstice; Easter and Passover falling near the vernal equinox — we rarely celebrate them as such. Even the few civic holidays we have that are directly tied to nature do not draw our attention to the changing of seasons. Arbor Day passes with little fanfare or national attention. Earth Day feels less like a celebration and more like a yearly scolding about our carbon footprints. Thanksgiving serves mostly as an on-ramp to the pre-Christmas shopping season.
Around the table, Americans give thanks for worthy things like friends, family and health, but few count the food on the table and the earth that provided it among the things to give thanks for. And none of these holidays mark the seasonal shift in the earth's rotation around the sun.
How Groundhog Day is unique
Groundhog Day is different. Arriving roughly at midwinter, the seasonal halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, historians believe Groundhog Day has its origins in the pre-Christian Celtic celebration of Imbolc, later syncretized into Candlemas. Groundhog Day is a celebration of nature itself and our place in it. It invites us to participate in an ancient ritual, wondering if winter will continue, or if the thaw will come early, allowing us to start a new cycle of planting, growth and harvest.
Shifting seasons have been an important source of humankind's celebrations for millennia. Ancient Egyptians marked the winter solstice and the seasonal changes brought by the flood season. Nowruz, the new year celebration observed across Central Asia, has been celebrated on the spring equinox for more than 3,000 years. Some of our most ancient and mysterious megalithic sites, like the Nabta Playa stone circle and Stonehenge, point to the connection between our moving planet, the rhythms of the year and the lengths early humans would go to accurately predict them.
In our modern American lives, many of us sit a comfortable distance from the churn of seasons. Cars carry us around in movable indoor spaces, regardless of season; apartments and houses are equipped with electrical heating and cooling systems that shelter us from nature's harshest days. We've put more distance between the earth that yields our food and the well-lit stores where we obtain it. At the beginning of our national project, we were a people who staked our fortunes on the seasons: more than 90% of Americans were farmers. Today, that number is below 2%.
We also live in a time when the earth is changing rapidly, and the seasons in North America are shifting, too. Spring seems to arrive early, autumn late — the growing season for crops is shifting, and plagued by more severe extreme weather. Human life, plant life and animal life are intricately intertwined with the balance of seasons. The separation between our everyday lives and the change of seasons may make us comfortable, but it may also come at a cost.
Groundhog Day can be a reminder of this delicate balance. It is a time of year when, if you are watching, the sky stays lighter later into the evening and the sun rises earlier in the morning. Birds begin their migration north and the dawn crackles with their songs. And in a relatively obscure Pennsylvania town, a group of people wearing top hats will hold a groundhog up in the air and try to determine if he glimpsed his shadow.
So, let's celebrate Groundhog Day, in all its bizarre, quirky strangeness. Let it remind us we are still in the clutches of winter, and hope for a temperate spring. Let it remind us that we have not subdued nature, but merely made ourselves more comfortable in its domain. And let us ask ourselves at this crucial turning point, what is ahead? Will it be more of the same, or are we prepared for change?
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