Groundhog Day, celebrated every year on February 2, is a modern folk holiday arising from the old Candlemas holiday.� Groundhog Day tradition holds that if the groundhog sees his shadow, it will return to its burrow and there will be six more weeks of winter.� If the groundhog fails to see his shadow, there will be an early spring.

Of course, there are many groundhogs in many regions of the world.� However, the definitive answer is accepted to come from Punxsutawney Phil.

Candlemas, which is still a holiday, is a religious holiday (as opposed to being a dry run for spring break among local college students). The religious event is from the Book of Luke, Chapter 2, when Jesus was presented in Jewish tradition to the Lord.

How does that involve a whistlepig, you ask?

Well, let’s start with the obvious.� There aren’t many woodchucks in the Holy Land.� More accurately there are no groundhogs in the entire Middle East.� (Bonus Bible groundhog trivia: eating a groundhog is not kosher, because groundhogs “chew the cud” in the sense as rabbits do.)

So, how does the groundhog overtake Jesus for control of a minor holiday?

Like most western holidays, the date for Groundhog Day and Candlemas comes from earlier established pre-Christian holidays.� This isn’t to say that Candlemas is derived from a pagan holiday.� It isn’t — that would make too much sense after everything else you’re about to read.

It’s just that northern Europeans were generally not knowledgeable enough to follow the traditional Jewish calendar which is a lunar calendar anyhow.� Except somehow they do follow it for Easter.� Go figure; that’s another animal story altogether.
The holiday in question, Imbolc, was a holiday of practical importance because it marks when hunters began looking for animals to leave their burrows at the end of a long winter.

In pre-Christian religion, the theory went that the goddess Cailleach would come out to gather new firewood on that day.� If she was aiming for a long winter, she’d make it a bright day, so as to have lots of light for finding firewood.� Short winter, less light and less firewood.

This is why the groundhog seeing his shadow is a bad thing.� Apparently groundhogs gather firewood.� I was previously unaware of this fact.� It’s been my experience that they prefer to gather clover, if anything.

Eventually, the holiday was changed to St. Brigid’s Day, when Ireland converted to Christianity during the 500s.� This period of Christianization also gives us St Patrick’s Day, another Christian holiday largely abused for drunken revelry. � St. Brigid’s Day is now celebrated on February 1, as is Imbolc. Apparently St. Brigid planned better, because she didn’t gather any firewood.
The fudging of the dates to February 2 is a product of changing calendar systems, plus the proximity of Candlemas (Feb 2) to St. Brigid’s Day (Feb 1).

Um, where’s the groundhog?�

There’s something missing still, huh?� No groundhog.

Of course, there isn’t a groundhog until Christian Europeans make it to the New World.
It cooks down to this.� The old Candlemas theory (early spring/long winter) eventually became an issue of planting crops, as opposed to killing burrowing animals.� Of course this is way before The Farmer’s Almanac and way, way before light meters were invented.� And since Imbolc tradition already invoked looking for burrowing animals on February 1, it wasn’t a giant leap to go looking for a burrowing animal on February 2, either.
And what would likely be one of the first burrowing animal to come out of hibernation in the eastern US?� A groundhog.

Conclusions

A Feb 1 pagan holiday about a goddess gathering firewood becomes transferred — by way of a patron Saint of Ireland — to a minor Christian holiday from the first year of the life of Jesus.� And then a groundhog gets put in place of the goddess/patron saint/baby Jesus, because Irish and German settlers were trying to gauge when to plant crops.

Is that clear enough?� What?� It’s incoherent.

To make it tad more coherent, keep in mind what the holiday meant to the people who’ve kept it going for centuries.� Early northern Europeans were trying to get a handle on when spring would come.� Initially for hunting, but eventually for planting crops.

Northern Europeans don’t get a decent, accurate calendar until the 1600s.� So, you kinda have to make do with what you have.� Of course, hibernating animals tend to have a good gauge on how winter is going to turn.� So, you look to them for information (this is before Wikipedia, mind you).

Of course, now the holiday is a lark.

And a small town in western Pennsylvania has built an economy around you coming to enjoy the lark.