February 2nd is Groundhog Day in America ... Will Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow or not? Will there be 6 more weeks of winter or are spring temperatures just around the corner?!
Recently I read an article about the origins of Groundhog Day, and it mentioned that the original winter-predictor was actually the HEDGEHOG, but when German settlers came to America, few hedgehogs were to be found so they watched the next best thing: the native groundhog.
In German, a groundhog is translated as Murmeltier. I am no expert on its origin, but I can tell you that the German verb murmeln means to mutter or to mumble! (The noun Murmel is translated to be a marble.) I prefer to envision a groundhog muttering around to himself as he is awoken at the crack of dawn by a crowd of boisterous people who force him out of hibernation to make a non-scientific prediction of the weather forecast for the next 6 weeks. HOW RUDE!
The hedgehog is der Igel in German. I wrote a little more about the word Igel during my Projekt: A bis Z posts last year. The word is pronounced: ee-gehl.
All of this said - and guess what? Upon further research and "google-ing," I found that Wikipedia states that the Germans did NOT substitute the groundhog for a hedgehog but that the tradition in the Old Country had been to use a BADGER as a winter weather predictor! The German word for badger is Dachs.
The Pennsylvania Dutch were immigrants from German-speaking areas of Europe. The Germans already had a tradition of marking Candlemas (February 2) as "Badger Day" (Dachstag), where if a badger emerging found it to be a sunny day thereby casting a shadow, it foreboded the prolonging of winter by four more weeks.
Protestant Germany
The Candlemas was a Catholic festival officially eliminated by the Protestant Reformists, but it had been retained and continued to be celebrated by the folk.
The weather-predicting animal on Candlemas was usually the badger, although regionally the animal was the bear or the fox. The original weather-predicting animal in Germany had been the bear, another hibernating mammal, but when they grew scarce the lore became altered.
Similarity to the groundhog lore has been noted for the German formula "Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmeßwoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche" (If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas-week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole). A slight variant is found in a collection of weather lore (bauernregeln, lit. "farmers' rules") printed in Austria in 1823.
(Source for above information is Wikipedia.)
Personally, no matter what animal has the best odds of correctly predicting our next 6 weeks' forecast, I am hoping for SPRING WEATHER as soon as possible. How about you?
The movie, Groundhog Day, was the movie on our honeymoon flight. We didn't love it really, but it became a sentimental thing for us.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Thanks for sharing. And, YES!!, please bring on spring. It has been SOOOO cold this year taking care of animals each morning.