Hope's Groundhog Day traditions go back centuries

One of Hope’s newest traditions is also one of its oldest — the Groundhog Day ceremony. The practice of consulting a furry critter to determine the weather was familiar to the earliest citizens of Hope, and to many cultures from centuries before.

The latest version of the Hope Groundhog Day ceremony is only around six years old. As in past years, town dignitaries, suitably dressed in formal costumes, will gather in the Square, extract a groundhog from a box, inspect its shadow, and make a prediction at least as reliable as that of the weather forecasters on TV.

This year, novice groundhog Hope is the star of the show. Hope took over from expert weather predictor Grubby in 2021. Grubby’s predictions were more than 50% accurate, beating even the famous Punxsutawney Phil, whose predictions came in at only 46% accurate. Officials trust that Grubby has passed on her weather accuracy to young Hope, who came to Utopia Wildlife Rebilitators as a baby when her mother was killed.

The ceremony in Hope is one of around 20y Groundhog Day ceremonies open to the public in the U.S. Public ceremonies began in 1887, when the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club began the tradition. But the practice goes back much further than that, as the town of Hope’s first settlers knew well.

February 2 — Groundhog Day — came by its reputation for weather forecasting by way of two related festivals. The first is the religious holiday of Candlemas, celebrated on February 2 as the day Jesus was first presented in the temple, as described in Luke 2:22–40. Traditionally Candlemas was regarded as the final day of the Christmas season, when parishioners brought candles to church to be blessed. The forty days between Christmas and Candlemas were regarded as a time of Mary’s Purification — in the Bible, 40 is the traditional number for purification, as in Noah’s Flood, which lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, or the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert.

(This is also the reason that people being isolated for disease have been kept apart for 40 days. The Italian word for “forty days” is “quarantina,” which gave us our word “quarantine.”)

Early Moravians like the ones who founded Hope left their Advent Star up until Candlemas, and marked the holiday by taking it down.

So Candlemas was traditionally regarded as the transition between Christmas — the winter season — and the beginning of the spring season.

Accordingly, the weather on Candlemas was thought to predict the weather for the coming season. A traditional English rhyme said:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Come winter, have another flight;

If Candlemas bring clouds and rain,

Go winter, and come not again.

And an old Scottish rhyme says:

If Candlemas is fair and clear

There'll be twa [two] winters in the year.

The Germans who made up the early settlers of Hope had the same tradition. Back in Germany they had looked to hedgehogs, foxes, badgers, or even bears to forecast the weather on February 2. One German saying went: “Wenn der Igel Lichtmess seinen Schatten sieht, so kriecht er wieder auf sechs Wochen ins Loch” (If the hedgehog sees his shadow at Candlemas, then he crawls back into his hole for six weeks.) Germans brought this tradition wherever they settled in the United States, and in the early years of our country it celebrated most widely in German areas such as Pennsylvania (where Punxsutawney Phil is located), Ohio, and Indiana.

The weather-forecasting superstitions around Groundhog Day were only part of a much larger body of folklore in which animals could foretell the weather. A dog lying on its back was supposed to foretell a storm, as was a cat lying on its side and looking upward. The cawing of crows or a heron flying low to the ground meant that rain was coming. Other signs of rain included roosters sitting on a fence or dogs or cats eating grass. And there were numerous superstitions around dates: the number of fogs in January foretold the number of frosts in May, and rain on the day of the Seven Sleepers (June 27) meant the chestnut crop would be poor.

The Candlemas tradition and its animal associations were enough to get Groundhog Day started, but another religious holiday contributed. February 2 was also the eve of the feast day of St. Blaise, an early Armenian saint who was said to be a physician, and whose miracles were celebrated widely throughout Europe. The legends said that atfter healing many people, Blaise withdrew to a cave to pray, and animals flocked to him there to be healed and then to become his assistants. People used to evoke the blessings of Blaise by holding candles crossed over the head of sufferers, which made the holiday meld together with Candlemas. And it seemed natural that a holiday honoring a saint with animal helpers would feature animals that could help everyone.

So the tradition of Groundhog Day is old indeed, even if Hope’s formal ceremony is new.

“It's a nice way for the town to get together and cheer things up in the winter,” says Kathy Hershey of Utopia Wildlife, who says that Groundhog Hope has been preparing for weeks. “She’s excited about it, I can tell!”