Imbolc and Groundhog's Day

In its earliest incarnation, Groundhog Day wasImbolc, a pagan celebration associated with fertility and weather divination. The word, Imbolcis Gaelic, the language of the Celts. There is a strong association between Imbolc and Brigid, a Celtic fertility goddess. When the pagan holidays were transformed into Catholic equivalents, two new holidays emerged from Imbolc. One, Saint Brigid's Day (a.k.a. Saint Bridget's Day), was celebrated on February 1. Saint Brigid's Day honored an Irish saint, named after the Celtic goddess, who was a contemporary of Saint Patrick's.

The second holiday deriving from Imbolc was Candlemas Day and was celebrated on February 2 (Groundhog Day). Candlemas was the feast of Mary's purification and was marked by a candle procession. The ties between purification rituals and the month of February also hark back to the pagan era. Indeed, our very word, "February," which derives from Latin, unmistakably designates the month as a time for purification (februa means "expiatory offerings"). The Lupercalia, a pagan Roman purification ritual, took place in February.

But how did a groundhog become the symbol for a holiday that was marked by a candle procession? Well, the Romans, for instance, had celebrated a rough equivalent to our Groundhog Day in early February -- only a hedgehog was in charge of the weather divination, not a groundhog. And such beliefs survived the Christianization of Europe (going "underground," if you will), attaching themselves to Candlemas Day as folklore. European settlers in North America kept the pagan tradition alive, but substituted the native groundhog for the European hedgehog. Clearly, Imbolc and the older traditions have won out: today in North America, almost everyone in the general public has heard of "Groundhog Day," while mention of "Candlemas Day" would generally draw expressions of puzzlement!

Most people have now distanced themselves from fertility rites, purification rituals and weather divination (well, except for meteorologists, perhaps!). Nonetheless, on some level, don't we still intuitively associate fertility and purification with spring? Nor can we help but spend our winters speculating on spring's arrival. If hope had a scent, it would be the smell in the air on a warm February day.

If the Groundhog comes out of his winter quarters and sees his shadow, then he will return to his burrow for another six weeks, i.e., on the spring equinox. This is how Groundhog Day turns out most years, namely, with a prediction that good weather will not arrive till the calendar says it's time for the spring equinox. But if Groundhog Day is cloudy, then the Groundhog will remain out, since cloud cover on Groundhog Day is supposed to be an indication of prematurely good weather (just howprematurely is not spelled out by the tradition).

At this juncture, perhaps you're in the scoffer's camp, shrugging your shoulders with a "so what?" regarding Groundhog Day and its vernal prognostications. Phil Connors, Bill Murray's character in the movie, "Groundhog Day," started out in this camp, before his transition (transition, as I argue below, is what the Groundhog Day holiday is all about). Indeed, when pressed for his own prediction on when winter will end, Connors sarcastically gives the date of the spring equinox -- March 21. It's rather arbitrary, after all, to choose a groundhog to play weather forecaster, rather than some other animal; nor should the weather on one day (February 2) weigh so heavily in a 6-week forecast. But such objections utterly miss the point behind Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day is our only holiday that focuses squarely on weather. It occurs at a time when weather occupies Northerners' thoughts more thoroughly than at any other time of the year. We know we're still stuck in winter, but enough of the winter has elapsed that we feel we can now justifiably look ahead to the promise of the spring equinox. More than any other holiday, Groundhog Day is the "looking-ahead" holiday, a holiday of transition. We're not so much celebrating the day at hand, February 2, as we are a day that is on our horizon, the spring equinox. The spring equinox is simply being celebrated ahead of time, as Groundhog Day, on February 2. Asking us to bottle up our hopes until three weeks in March have passed would be unreasonable, don't you think?

This rationale accounts for all the talk about "forecasting" on Groundhog Day. For it isn't the Groundhog who's looking into the future on Groundhog Day, it is we. And whether it arrives early, late or on-time, this is one prediction that inevitably will prove true: good weather will arrive, one way or another. At least it always has. And on Groundhog Day we take solace in that fact.

If you conceive of Groundhog Day as the "looking-ahead" holiday, par excellence, suddenly you realize that its occurrence in early February is not so arbitrary, after all. Although we mark the passage of a year's time using calendars, I may be able to illustrate my point better by referring analogously to another means of measuring time: the clock. Here's what I mean...

Let's say we wanted to mark off the progress of the earth's annual revolution around the sun using the twelve divisions on the face of a clock, as if we were measuring, instead, the passage within a single day from dawn to dusk (6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.). In this analogy, the winter solstice corresponds to dawn and would be at 6:00 a.m., the summer solstice at 12:00 noon. By this logic, the spring equinox and autumnal equinox would occur at 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., respectively, working clockwise. At 6:00 p.m. we would have come full-circle: it would be dusk, and we'd have as little sunlight as we had started out with, at dawn.

The period that concerns us is that between the winter solstice and the spring equinox (that is, between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.), the time when good weather is so close, and yet so far away. If we looked for the midpoint between these two junctures, it would be 7:30 a.m. on our imaginary clock -- about February 2 (or a few days after), according to the calendar. It would be right around Groundhog Day, in other words.

Yes, Groundhog Day stands at one of the eight major junctures of the year's passing. By the time February 2 arrives, we've already completed the most difficult portion of our ascent out of the pit of winter's darkest days, standing half of the way to the longed-for spring equinox. The future looks bright as we survey it from our Groundhog Day burrows -- and nothing can overshadow our optimism.