By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
It certainly is not scientific, and the resulting meteorological prediction rarely is correct. Still, like you, early each February, I anxiously watch the news to find out whether a groundhog in Pennsylvania saw his shadow.
People have been doing the same thing for over 130 years. (In 1887, the residents of Punxsutawney celebrated the first Groundhog Day at a place called Gobbler’s Knob, which is a few miles outside town in a clearing atop a wooded hill.) Why? To find out, I did a little research this year.
According to the History Channel: “Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.”
The day has spiritual meaning in other ways too. It stands as a sentinel on the Christian calendar, a date when we watch longingly for the first signs of spring thawing, of new life, of Easter. Even the popular Bill Murray 1993 movie (which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year) named after the holiday anticipates Easter. How else can one explain the numerous patterns of frustration, despair, death, rebirth, love, and transformation experienced by weatherman Phil Connors?
In the past, I have noted Groundhog Day as a trivial but charming diversion from the chills and hardships typically inflicted by the last month of winter. This year, like the beleaguered but ultimately redeemed Phil Conners, I will try to give it more credit as an important inflection point on my own spiritual journey.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
