The story of Groundhog Day is colorful and interesting, and not just because part of it takes place at Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania, hands down the filthiest-sounding place name in America. It's a little bit of Americana that coincides with some older European traditions. The truth is, though, that the question of whether Punxsutawney Phil is right or wrong in his predictions is rather subjective.
As I write this, we're weeks past Groundhog Day. And in fact we just passed the Vernal Equinox. It hasn't been a particularly chilly March. But the temperature today barely got over the freezing point, and it's a few degrees below it outside now.
It actually doesn't mean much for a rodent or anyone else to predict a long or short winter, because everyone won't agree on when winter ended even after it happened, due to it happening in fits and starts. That's not to say the tradition's not fun, though.
2 comments:
I can't say I ever knew the official story and history of Groundhog Day but I'm well informed now. That a couple of thousand people show up every year to see what Punxsutawney Phil has to say about the early or late arrival of spring is a signal of just how easy it is to impress an otherwise bored audience. Then again, if you saw the movie the locals do manage to arrange a fair amount of food and amusements to keep the people occupied. I can't say I liked Bill Murray as a comedian that much but the film was actually pretty good - 'we'll do this over and over until you get it right'.
Back at the dawn of time when I was young and gay a couple of guys who lived around Lake Wilcox would tow an old junker car out onto the ice in late winter. Then they'd hold a lottery with the prize going to the person whose prediction came closest to the date and time when it would sink - usually mid-April. I've wondered from time to time just how many old cars there are down there, the idea of them would likely horrify the fussy kidult population.
Little rituals like that do fill a void, I think. Whether or not Punxsutawney Phil (boy do I hate having to type that) tells them anything important about the weather, Groundhog Day does get people out of their houses and bring attention from around the world. I've always enjoyed Bill Murray as a comic and the movie Groundhog Day was very clever. It plays like an adaptation of a story that might have appeared in Fantastic magazine sometime in the fifties.
It's funny to think of archeologists hundreds of years from now finding the remains of cars left in Lake Wilcox--or some other body of water around where guys did the kind of ritual you're talking about--and trying to figure out what these great machines were and why they were sacrificed. I mean, it couldn't really happen because even by now they'd be too corroded to make much of an impression at all, but if somehow one were well preserved enough it could give them pause.
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