Happy Groundhog Day
Posted by SugarRay on February 02, 2007

Last week we went through "Blue Monday." We usually see this news story every year around the twenty second or the twenty third of January. It gets all scientific about why that day is the most depressing of the year. It has something to do with credit card bills and bad weather. Whatever. Personally, I think they are all wrong. The most depressing day of the year is not “Blue Monday.” It is every single day of the month of February.

I don’t like February. I never have, and I probably never will. It is the one month out of the year that is dedicated to everything that sucks in life. Winter has been going on for way too long, and we are over a month removed from the Christmas cheer that makes the cold fun, or at least tolerable. All our New Year’s resolutions have been broken and we have again proven to ourselves that we fail at everything we try. Valentine’s Day reminds us that members of the opposite sex don’t take us very seriously. Not to mention that it is "National White Guilt Month." Yeah, February isn’t a happy time.

But what kind of attitude is that, I ask you! That isn’t the American spirit! Hell, it isn’t even the Canadian spirit! It’s time to pick ourselves up, stop being defeatist losers and celebrate everything that is great in life! It is time to celebrate everything that is GREAT about the month of February! Huzzah! And we start with the ridiculous, unnecessary, but still fun tradition that is Groundhog Day.

To fully understand the goofy greatness that is Groundhog Day, we must first examine the roots and understand how February 2 came to be. There are a lot of contributing factors that makes it the most historically interesting holiday of the whole year, believe it or not. But most people just shrug off today as a “non-event” without scratching the surface of what the holiday is all about. Not today, though!

It all started with the pagan festival of Imbloc, which was originally dedicated to the goddess Brighid. The beginning of February was when they traditionally saw the first signs of spring. When Christianity became more predominant in Europe it was replaced by the holiday of Candlemas, which celebrates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of Jesus Christ to the temple.

Many European cultures believed that on this day, which falls halfway between between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox, that animals were given a kind of other worldly power to predict the weather. The most direct precursor to the modern tradition is a belief by the Romans that “if the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day, an animal, the hedgehog, would cast a shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of bad weather.” European immigrants to North America still held this belief and found the Groundhog to be the perfect native creature to be their weather predicting mascot.

Groundhog’s Day has since become a modern American and Canadian tradition. No one else seems to care about it anymore. If the Europeans still celebrated it they would most likely surrender to the Groundhog and expect America to come bail them out, just like in World War II.

But anyway, like most holidays in America and Canada, we use it as an excuse to party and get drunk! The most famous, and yet most obscure celebration is in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Good ol’ Punxsutawney Phil is pulled out of a hole by a bunch of weird old men in top hats and tells them whether or not we have to suffer through six more weeks of winter. After he breaks our hearts with his shadow-seeing shananigans, we console ourselves with beer and drunken snowball fights.

Another great aspect of February 2nd is that Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day” is given the same baffling treatment as “A Christmas Story” on Christmas. TV stations play it over and over so you can watch it whenever you feel like, just like you could if you owned a DVD player.

So, when you look at everything we have learned today, you have to ask yourself “What is the true meaning of Groundhog Day?” And the answer is that it really doesn’t mean squat. Groundhogs don’t have magical meteorological powers. If they did, the first words out of Punxsutawney Phil’s mouth every year would be "Al Gore is an idiot!" It is just an excuse to have fun that happens to have a lot of historical background. So now that we have gotten the history part out of the way, go celebrate! Don’t let the long, cold winter get you down! Have a Happy February everybody!