Marmot sees his shadow

PETER BUFFA

I think we found one. Seriously. I can feel it. Just a few more hours

in Photoshop and I think we’re there.

OK, I don’t know if you saw Phil do his thing on Tuesday, but he

said it’s going to be a long winter. That’s “Punxsutawney Phil,” of

course.

Tuesday was Groundhog Day and the perennial horde of media,

visitors and locals assembled on Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa.,

just as they have for 120 years, to see Phil emerge and make his

call.

Every Feb. 2, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, all gussied up in

black coats and top hats, gathers around the hollowed-out stump where

Phil lives and lifts the little guy from his lair to see if he

notices his shadow.

In 120 years, no one has ever explained how you can possibly tell

if a chubby, cranky groundhog (it’s actually a marmot, a large North

American rodent) has seen anything or not, let alone something as

ephemeral as his shadow. But that’s part of the charm of Groundhog

Day. It makes no sense whatsoever.

It is one of the loopiest, most meaningless things I’ve ever seen,

and I have seen a lot of loopy and meaningless things. And doing it

in a place called “Punxsutawney” is a perfect match. The name comes

from the Delaware Indian term for the area, “ponksad-uteney,” which

means “the place of the sand flies.” No wonder they went with

Punxsutawney.

Last Tuesday, at exactly 7:31 a.m., Phil saw his shadow, and that

means six more weeks of winter. Yeah, I’m sure. How has Phil done

over the years? The record since 1886 is that Phil saw his shadow 95

times and didn’t see it 14 times. There are no entries for the 10

years of the 1890’s, with no explanation, of course.

Who started this thing anyway? The German immigrants who first

arrived in the 1700s brought an old tradition called “Candlemas Day”

with them. Candlemas Day, Feb. 2, is the halfway point between the

winter solstice and the spring equinox.

In Europe, priests blessed candles at mass that day (thus the name

“Candlemas Day”) which people took home and placed in their window to

ward off the dark of winter, which is where the Pennsylvania Dutch

custom of a candle in the window comes from. As you know, the

“Pennsylvania Dutch” are not Dutch at all, but German.

There is also an old English ditty about Candlemas Day: “If

Candlemas be fair and bright, winter has another flight. If Candlemas

brings clouds and rain, winter will not come again.” You have to

rhyme “again” with “rain” to make that work, but you get the point.

The first mention of a actual groundhog getting into the act is in

the diary of a storekeeper in Morgantown, Pa., named James Morris,

dated Feb. 4, 1841: “Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas Day, the

day on which, according to the Germans, the groundhog peeps out of

his winter quarters, and if he sees his shadow, he pops back for

another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy, he remains out, as

the weather is to be moderate.”

Down the road in Punxsutawney, on every Feb. 2 since 1886,

Punxsutawney Phil has done his thing. Is Phil the only groundhog on

the job on Feb. 2? He is not. There have been a number of pretenders

to the throne, or stump, over the years -- probably the most famous

being “Wiarton Wille”, who lives outside Ontario ... the one in

Canada. Interest in Groundhog Day was an acquired taste until the

1993 Bill Murray film, “Groundhog Day,” which has to be one of the

funniest movies ever, which is a long time.

Whereas a few people would make the trek to Punxsutawney every

Feb. 2 to see Phil do his thing, after “Groundhog Day” hit the big

and little screen, tens of thousands of people started showing up in

little old Punxsutawney on the big day. Thousands of people who need

gas, food, hotel rooms and souvenirs showing up in a place called

Punxsutawney, with all of 7,500 people, is not something that goes

unnoticed by other small towns, which means there are now more

Punxsutawney Phil wannabes than a mathematically marvelous marmot

could count.

In addition to “Wiarton Willie” in Canada, there’s “Holland

Huckleberry” in Holland, Ohio; “Birmingham Bill” in Birmingham, Ala.;

“General Beauregard Lee” in Liburn, Ga.; “Sir Walter Wally” in

Raleigh, N.C.; “Dixie Dan” in Tupelo, Miss.; “Florida Phyllis” in

Apopka, Fla.; and “French Creek Freddie” in French Creek, W.V., to

name just a few.

And some of the Groundhog Day prognosticators are not even

groundhogs at all. There is “Furby the Wonder Chicken” in Victoria,

B.C., and my personal favorite, “Mr. Prozac,” in Oxford, Mich., who

is a llama, which is just like a groundhog except much taller and it

spits. Oxford’s G-Day gatherings started with a groundhog named “Noah

John,” who is, tragically, no longer with us. Noah crossed over to

groundhog heaven on April 22, 2002, the result of complications from

an unplanned encounter with an automobile.

According to the “Groundhog Central” website, “Before Noah John

died, he met several times with his llama friend, Mr. Prozac, and

instructed Zac in the art of weather prognosticating.”

Now there is the perfect pronouncement for Groundhog Day, which

might have had something to do with Candlemas Day at some point, but

you can’t tell me that there wasn’t a pub, a few bored people on a

cold winter’s night, and a whole lot of beer mixed in there somewhere

along the way.

There you have it. Everything you need to know about Candlemas,

Groundhog Day and Mr. Prozac. And as for you, Punxsutawney Phil, you

little butterball ... you’re the best.

I gotta go.