Shadow Play In Woodbury For Groundhog Day

On Thursday, Feb. 2, all eyes turn to Gobbler’s Knob where Punxsutawney Phil, a 22-pound Pennsylvanian rodent is scheduled to emerge from hibernation.

Legend and a popular Hollywood movie suggest that this somnolent groundhog can divine the weather better than Chris Shaffer.

Will there be six more weeks of winter? Does it matter? It could if we change how we think of it.

It’s kind of a nutty holiday. We tend to accept nutty things when they’re steeped in tradition. But consider how Groundhog Day sounds to those first hearing of it.

Like when I was seated around a conference table attempting to schedule a meeting with colleagues. We said we should meet on Groundhog Day and my friend Emmanuel Choragudi flashed a curious expression like we must be joking.

Originally from Hyderabad, India, Emmanuel has lived in Woodbury for four years. He hasn’t seen Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and if I tried to explain it, I’d get mixed up with Bill Murray battling gophers in Caddyshack. Then I’d digress into defending the little known Quick Change as one of my favorite Bill Murray films.

Thankfully, another friend explained Groundhog Day to Emmanuel, who finds the whole thing kind of silly. That a groundhog is expected to predict weather correctly when trained weather experts often cannot.

Well, according to a Huffington Post story, the National Climatic Data Center reports that Phil’s predictions have been right 39 percent of the time. I’m calling you out Chris Shaffer. Do your predictions fare better?

Where does this confidence in groundhog prognosticating come from? I Googled it. It’s historically German folklore handed down to them by Roman pagans. When Christianity spread across Europe, the observance managed to attach itself to the Christian feast day, Candlemass.

Only two things seem to have changed since Groundhog Day first arrived in the U.S. in 1887:

1. These days, nobody’s heard of Candlemass.
2. Pennsylvanians rely on a groundhog for their prediction. In Germany it was hedgehogs.

I now propose attaching new meaning to this shadowy holiday. (Is it really a holiday when banks are open and doesn’t have a greeting card? Oh wait, they do.)

Anyway, Minnesotans instinctively know that we’ll endure six additional weeks of winter more often than not. We don’t need a groundhog’s shadow or Chris Shaffer to tell us this.

But don’t let that get you down. Think of Groundhog Day as the beginning of six weeks additional time to accomplish something before spring.

Maybe you’ve been meaning to eat better, exercise more, be kinder or more charitable, take a class, control your spending, quit smoking or start a project. Whatever it is, let the Groundhog get you started. Commit to something positive for the next six weeks of winter.

Make the most of this gift of time the groundhog wants to give us.

What will you do over the next six weeks that could make a winter shadow more meaningful than a silly myth about the weather?