Today I have been on fire at work; solving major company wide problems, breezing through paperwork, showing up the ignorant man who got my job (can you hear the embittered tone emanating in my words?), and even helping out fellow coworkers with their issues with management. I've done so much already that here I am 3/4 through the day bored and ready for a nice long nap. Not wanting to start snoring in my cube on the floor I did the usual: checked email, ebayed, craigslisted, freecycled, and searched the news...when I realized it was Groundhog Day.
While this holiday gets nationwide attention and even has a movie named after it (the movie which by the way, unlike the holiday, is KICK ass), I had absolutely no idea where the actual holiday originated from...SO, Being the NeRd that I am, I decided to research the origins of this holiday in hopes of finding the rationale behind leaving complicated weather streams and predictions to an rat like animal with only a 39% accuracy rate over the last 118 years.
As it turns out, Hebrew tradition required mothers to be purified in the temple 40 days after giving birth to their offspring. If you bust out your mental calculators you will see February 2nd (aka groundhog day) falls exactly 40 days after x-mas, officially marking the day of the purification of the Virgin Mary. Proof exists that state the lighting of candles was part of the purification celebration and resulted in the celebration later being called Candlemas, a festival of lights and the return of spring.
So, how does this relate to the groundhog? Well, supposedly, popular folk tales said “If Candlemas be fair and bright, Winter has another flight. If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Winter will not come again.”
So there you have it folks: a holiday with semi religious connotations reduced to.....a day where all come out to watch a fat rat like creature come out of his hole to predict the weather. All I can say is hmmm...and blah. Mary would be rolling in her grave in shame.
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