Groundhog's Day

Groundhogs Day is a holiday whos origins always made me wonder. A quick Google search today revealed that the original animal in question was a hedgehog, but that still doesn't explain why someone decided a rodent of all things had amazing powers of weather prediction.

I know the story says something about the Christian holiday of Candlemas, but even that doesn't explain the core question of how it started. If I may, I would like to put forth my own theory on the subject. I propose that the holiday started when someone was a little too bored during the winter and had been drinking or had partaken in some other recreational pharmaceutical. As this was well before the advent of drug laws, we need not worry about him seeing criminal charges before his idea got out to the public.

In fact, our story is helped if it was a shaman or religious leader who started the thing originally, whose use of what we shall call sacred substances allowed him to connect to the spirit world. In such an enlightened state, he received the revelation that a hedgehog would tell them if there would be six more weeks of winter if he saw his shadow. Of course, it could have been a secret groundhog plot, with the American rodents knowing someday that one of their own would get a comfortable place to stay and only be required to work one day a year. Well, that gets us as to how the holiday came into being. Now I'm going to answer why we continue to celebrate it. It's simple really, it's an excuse to get drunk and throw a party, two fine American traditions that are usually combined.