Volume 17 , Issue 4

This Is Groundhog Day

With today 2 February, being Groundhog day, we did some research and found this interesting article dated 2 February 1910, in the Palestine Daily Herald, Palestine, Texas, that dealt with just that: "This Is Groundhog Day." The day was fraught with grave meaning to those whose welfare depended on sunshine and shadow.

It began, "Today is Candlemas day; and "on Candlemas day, if the sun appear, there'll be two winters in one year."

This inspiring couplet is the Scotch version of it, but the Scotch rhymester was only half canny, for he left out the essential part of the matter, which is the groundhog. Candlemas day, in popular parlance, was nothing more or less than groundhog day; groundhog day from the frozen Yukon to the palms of Panama.

The story of the groundhog or woodchuck, which is scientifically known under the ponderous and awe-inspiring title of Arctomys Monax, as told by the country folk for many years to their children while seated in the glow of the great hearth fire, was that on noon of this dat thousands of years ago, when the earth was young, one of the first members of the groundhog family, after sleeping away the long days and nights of winter in its burrow, awakened on February 2 and crept quietly from its hole to take an observation of the weather.

The animal found the sun shining brightly, and seeing its shadow cast upon the ground after having slept so long, it became greatly frightened thinking it was a beast of prey, and rushed back into its den. The god of the clouds and storms, so the legend goes, observing the action of the groundhog, decreed that thereafter February 2 the animal should first emerge from its den, and should the day be sunshiny so that the groundhog could see its shadow, six weeks of icy, stormy weather should follow. On the contrary, should the day be cloudy, gloomy or stormy, so that the little animal could not see its shadow, it would mean that winter was practically over and there would be an early spring.

Therefore, on this day was fraught with grave meaning to those whose welfare depended on wind and wave, sunshine and shadow, or change of time and tide. So if there is a groundhog living in your vicinity, it behooves you to watch him carefully, for his advent is portentious.
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