Added: 09/22/2007 |
Groundhog Day And More Winter AheadEvery February 2 the whole United States converges on a small town in Pennsylvania to see if groundhog will see his shadow thereby predicting how much more winter the United States will have to endure. It is quite a big deal to everyone but the groundhog and when the prediction is over people put the poor little guy back in his hole for another year. How do they know if he saw his shadow?
Groundhog Day and all its hoopla started back in the late 1886 when a select group of people would go into the mountains outside of Punxsutawney and eat groundhogs. So Groundhog Day and all its publicity actually started off as a holiday in the summer when the very same town that now celebrates groundhogs used to eat them. Through it all there was the figure of Punxsutawney Phil that was the symbolic groundhog of Groundhogs Day and after a while the group around Punxsutawney Phil decided that they would take advantage of the publicity that Punxsutawney Phil was getting and create the February 2nd holiday around him. Now media from all over the country converge on Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania every February 2nd to see if Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow or not. The people in the Inner Circle claim that the current Punxsutawney Phil is the original Punxsutawney Phil which would make him an impossible 121 years old. They also claim that when he is ready to make his prediction he speaks in a language that only the Inner Circle can understand and they relay that message to the world. For this Punxsutawney Phil was immortalized in a movie starring Bill Murray called Groundhog Day and the rest, as they say, is history.
The tradition of Groundhog Day and weather predicting groundhogs soon started to catch fire and after a while Punxsutawney Phil had some competition. Soon there was Jimmy The Groundhog, Holtsville Hal, Dunkirk Dave, Staten Island Chuck, Wiarton Willie, Buckeye Chuck, Spanish Joe, and a host of other groundhogs in different parts of the snow states that have been blessed with the ability to predict the weather and every February 2nd they all come out and make their predictions. The keepers of these other groundhogs have all made their claim the their groundhog’s predictions are more accurate than Punxsutawney Phil’s but Punxsutawney Phil remains as the most famous rodent in the land that is not a cartoon character and it does not look like any of the other groundhogs will be knocking him off his throne any time soon.
Groundhog Day is rumored to have its roots in the jokes and gags of folklore based on the old medieval calendars. But today it is a fun little holiday that brings the attention of the whole country on a little town in Pennsylvania called Punxsutawney and a little groundhog named Phil.
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