Groundhog Day*

There are some things that I just don't understand.

I don't understand quantum physics.  Though, I have no desire to understand quantum physics.

I don't understand why I am barred from starting a blog called hotpants.blogspot.com just because a teenaged boy wrote 3 posts in 2001**.  Really?

And, I don't understand all the fuss about Groundhog Day.  Or I didn't until yesterday.  You see, when I was a small child, my mother told me that it works like this:

"If the groundhog comes out, sees his shadow, and is frightened back into his hole, that means there are still six more weeks of winter.  If he doesn't see his shadow and decides to hang out for a bit, that means that spring is only 6 weeks away."

So I didn't get all the buzz about him not seeing his shadow meaning an early spring.  I've been wondering about this for years.  Had everyone else in the world forgotten that it was all just a play on words?

I googled it today to unravel the mystery. And it turns out, I the only one in the world who believed that it was a play on words.  My history lesson:  Groundhog Day is a pagan festival dating back to the Middle Ages, traditionally associated with weather prediction and fertility.  Northern Europeans have agreed for hundreds of years that a sunny February 2nd means that spring is nowhere near coming, and a cloudy day means that it will be arriving any time now***.  So Mom, you were wrong.  I'm going to guess that what you were really trying to impress upon me is that the groundhog's predictions are bullshit, so I guess I forgive you.

Fertility, however, really got my attention.  At last!  It's been far too long since I had any reason to discuss the disgusting creation of life, and then drink to it. 

Groundhog Day and fertility going together makes some amount of sense. 

First, Spring is the season of fertility.  How could a celebration of the imminent spring escape the association? 

Second, as far as I can tell, most pagan holidays have do to with reproduction in one way or another.  Elaborate ways to promote sex, and lots of it, all of them.

I was really hoping to find some specific mid-winter fertility rites or rituals, so that I could get drunk this weekend and act out the opposite.  Apart from a suggestion that rubbing a groundhog's head might be good luck for women who are looking to conceive, I found nothing.   Which could mean that the fertility aspect got lost somewhere in between the Inquisition and the commercialization of Wiarton Willie and Punxsutawney Phil.  Or it could mean that the fertility bit wasn't that big a deal, and any specific rites or rituals were so boring and insignificant they weren't worth remembering.  The ancient Celtic equivalent to starting on prenatal vitamins.

Ways to celebrate Groundhog Day did not escape my attention.  There was some mention of beer for breakfast, intoxication being the only way an otherwise sane and normal adult would choose to stand outside for hours in mid-winter waiting for a glimpse of a ground squirrel.  Hawaiian-themed parties also came up.  So tomorrow night I'm going to put on a Hawaiian shirt and sip Mai Tai's.  Or put drink umbrellas in my beer.  I'll do something, anyway.


*No, not the one with Bill Murray.  Not that I have anything against Bill Murray.  I quite like Bill Murray.  Not his entire body of work.  Like Garfield.  And Garfield:  A Tale of Two Kitties.  I was going to include Groundhog Day as a thumbs down, but a quick check with Rotten Tomatoes revealed that Groundhog Day is rated as his best performance (96% Fresh).  After reading the plot summary, I realized I've never actually seen Groundhog Day.  But Meatballs.  Ghostbusters.  The Life Aquatic (I don't care what anyone says).  Lost in Translation****, if you'll indulge a moment of pretentiousness.  All amazing.

**Surely, if no one objected to two major motion pictures both called "Crash" being released within 8 years of each other, what could be wrong in relegating the 2001 hotpants blog to an archives folder and letting me use it now?

***Some trivia*****:  the Germans were the first to allow a burrowing creature of the forest tell them whether they should air out their summer clothes because T-shirt weather was on the way. 

****This is old news, but you know what he whispers in Scarlett Johansson's ear at the end of the movie?  It's "I have to go, but I won't let that come between us, okay"

****Some more trivia.  In Alaska, Groundhog Day is celebrated as "Marmot Day", actual "groundhogs" being scarce in those parts.  Marmot Day was officialized in 2009 by an act of Alaska State Legislature under Governor Sara Palin.  You remember Sara Palin. The woman who promoted oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?  Who said that "we've got to support our North Korean allies"?  Who endorsed "predator control" and encouraged the hunting of wolves by helicopter, offering 150 bucks per carcass?  Who ensured that sexual assault victims of Wasillia, Alaska be charged for their rape kits?   (P.S. - Marmot is not a specific animal but a species, Marmota, and the groundhog is one of them).