As a resident of Pennsylvania, I have been to Punxsy many a time, but never for this festivity.
February 2, 1887
In Pennsylvania, where annual Groundhog Day celebrations date back 135 years, mascot Punxsutawney Phil is growing long in the tooth. Typically, on February 2 — the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox — thousands gather in the forest of Punxsutawney, around a hill called Gobbler’s Knob. The men of the Inner Circle, a group of top-hatted Groundhog Day traditionalists, climb on stage and release Phil from his “burrow,” an artificial tree stump. The groundhog looks around and supplies a weather prediction: If Phil sees his shadow, locals should brace for six more weeks of winter, while an absent shadow denotes clouds, which are said to forecast an early spring. Although the Inner Circle insists Phil’s predictions are always correct, his true accuracy over the years is less than 40%.
Groundhog Day originated in Europe, where 10th-century Celts hosted a pagan festival to usher in spring, which developed into Christianity's Candlemas festival. Some Christians abroad contend that a sunny Candlemas portends 40 more days of winter, while Germans argue that a Candlemas can only be deemed sunny if small animals see their shadows. Upon immigrating to Pennsylvania, Germans carried on the tradition, but turned their focus solely to groundhogs. While the exact origins of the event are hazy, February 2, 1887 marked the first time a groundhog at Gobbler’s Knob predicted the length of winter, a tradition that brought us Punxsutawney Phil and the 1993 movie he helped inspire, “Groundhog Day.”
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Such funny little creatures. We don`t have any groundhogs here.
