130th Groundhog's Day: Shadow or No Shadow?

For those who live in Pennsylvania there are only 2 groundhogs that are important to us. Punxsutawney Phil telling us whether there will be 6 more weeks of winter and Gus the spokesman for the PA lottery telling us to keep on scratching. Some may look at Pennsylvanians as weird when we talk about groundhog’s day but it’s tradition, and one that dates back 130 years.

The first groundhog’s day was on February 2nd 1887. Clearly there have been a few Punxsutawney Phil’s since that day but year after year people still wanted to know if the little groundhog saw its shadow.

The origins of groundhog’s day is attributed to the Christian tradition of Candlemas day. Here, candles, distributed by the clergy were used to determine how long winter would be. Germans had a similar tradition but would use hedgehogs instead however upon arriving to Pennsylvania where groundhogs are abundant, they switched to using them instead.

In 1887 a worker at a newspaper in Punxsutawney who also was a part of a group of groundhog hunters declared that the Punxsutawney groundhog Phil was the only weather predicting groundhog, thus starting the tradition of what we know as groundhog’s day.

Unfortunately today Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow indicating that there is still winter weather ahead. Stay warm everyone.

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