Historians today tell us that the ancient Celts arrived at the shores of Britain around 1,000 BC and lived there during the Iron Age, the Roman Age and the post Roman era. Living on an island with limited opportunity for air travel, they longed for opportunities to make their own fun.

The Celts could hardly wait for February 2nd to roll around when Imbolc, a pagan festival, marked the beginning of spring’s arrival. This had been determined as the approximate midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Two and a half millennia later, Christian clergy began to bless candles that folks hoped would last through the remainder of the winter as part of a mass on this same day. As a result, Christians began celebrating February 2nd as Candlemas day during church services.

John Ray (1627-1705) was first to offer a biological definition for the term SPECIES in his 1686 book, “History of Plants.” Although Ray was a naturalist, botanist, philosopher, and theologian, he was not a poet. Despite this blatant shortcoming, he is credited now with writing this iconic poem in 1678 related to February 2nd – a day referred to then as Candlemas day while commonly known now as Groundhog Day.

If Candlemas day be fair and bright

Winter will have another flight

If on Candlemas day it be shower and rain

Winter is gone and will not come again.

Thanks to the Candlemas Day tradition and perhaps John Ray’s poem, the superstition based on how long winter would last grew. Scientifically, this all hinged on meteorological data gathered on February 2nd. If the day felt warm and the sun was shining, people logically uttered, “Oh, this will never last,” and started to prepare for more lousy winter ahead. Conversely, if it was overcast and rainy, they said, “Wassup with this crumby weather?” confident that the community pool would be open soon, thanks to Arizona-like weather coming just around the corner.

As time passed into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, other European scholars, non-poets and non-clergy preached that a better predictor of spring might be established by observing when hibernating animals like bears, badgers and maybe hedgehogs emerged from their burrows. Following selfless sacrifices of eyewitnesses closely observing hungry bears and badgers wake up, the superstition was further perfected by unscathed hedgehog volunteers watching from greater distance. An understanding evolved that whether or not the animal saw its shadow as it awoke from winter’s slumber revealed what the weather was like that day in addition to what could be expected for the following six weeks. Clarifying science further, a rodent seeing its shadow was bad news while no shadow indicated you could mothball your sheepskin coat until fall.

Fortunately for today’s Americans who love holidays, German immigrants of the 1800s didn’t leave tradition behind and instead brought their holiday to Pennsylvania along with an added twist – a new type of rodent to forecast the coming of spring. Groundhogs.

Coincidentally, the first Groundhog Club began as a committee within the Punxsutawney Elks Lodge around this same time in 1886. Club members enjoyed getting together over a few steins of ale before hunting groundhogs, then ground them up to serve as meat back at the lodge (no doubt the genesis for subsequent Elk fund raisers). Fortunately for groundhogs, this practice lost momentum over time, as Elk folk packed on weight that blocked the sun’s rays from reaching to the ground (and Punxsutawney Phil) from too many fast-food rodent-burgers at the lodge.

This brings us to where we are centuries later, during February 2025. Thanks to Mr. Ray, The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and one well-known rodent, we can now be confident when spring will arrive.