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Groundhog Day
From the Pennsylvania Dutch Country in Southeastern and Central Pennsylvania has spread the fun holiday celebration of Groundhog Day. Now firmly ensconced as a national event every February 2, it radiates outward from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and gives us all a welcome holiday to celebrate between New Year’s Day and Easter. Through this holiday, the Groundhog has in a sense been personalized and humanized. Learn more about this unique holiday and grab your copy of Groundhog Day today!
168 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 8, 2023
Groundhog Day’s Pennsylvania connections receive suitable emphasis in this concise 2003 study by a prominent Philadelphia-based folklore scholar. Author Don Yoder’s own ties to the Keystone State mean that life experience combines with diligent scholarly research to produce a fun and engaging look at what must be the quirkiest of all major American holidays.
Yoder, a folklorist at the University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively about his home state, with particular emphasis on the Pennsylvania German culture that is part of his heritage. It pleased me to be able to note that Penn – with its Ivy League credentials, its awe-inspiring medical and law and business schools, and its laudable outreach to the West Philadelphia community within which it is situated – also excels in regional research regarding Pennsylvania folklore. Benjamin Franklin would be proud, I think.
Beginning with the familiar “Punxsutawney Phil” ritual with which Groundhog Day is so strongly identified, Yoder provides helpful information regarding how the holiday and festival evolved in this modest borough of Western Pennsylvania, to become a media phenomenon presided over by an Inner Circle of formally dressed local luminaries.
The Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day (1993) does receive mention here; and as Yoder is a scholar of his region’s culture, I found it interesting to hear his outlook on the film’s presentation of that culture: “The caricaturing of Punxsutawney’s solid citizenry, especially the top-hatted Inner Circle, making them almost – but not quite – urban Appalachian hillbillies, is highly exaggerated and all part of the fun” (p. 15).
Yoder then goes on to describe how the Groundhog Day ritual that began in Punxsutawney has spread across the country and around the world. I did not know, for example, that other parts of Pennsylvania – Quarryville in Lancaster County, and Doylestown in Bucks County – have their own Groundhog Day rituals. Poor Phil must be looking over his furry little shoulder at those nervy, presumptuous intra-state rivals back east!
With the conscientious scholarly approach that has always characterized his work, Yoder then explores the origins of Groundhog Day. The holiday can be traced back to the medieval Catholic festival of Candlemas (the Feast of Candles) that falls on February 2nd; in Germany, where winters are long and cold, a folkloric tradition evolved, setting forth the idea that the German badger or Dachs would emerge from his burrow on Candlemas. “[I]f the badger encountered sunshine on Candlemas and therefore saw his shadow, he crawled back into his hole to stay for four more weeks, which would be a continuation of winter weather. In America, the four weeks became six” (p. 53) – and in Pennsylvania, where badgers are scarce and groundhogs are abundant, the badger was supplanted by the groundhog, and the Dachstag (“Badger Day”) of the Old Country became the Groundhog Day of the New World.
Yoder dutifully sets forth an account of the taxonomy and behavior of Marmota monax, the groundhog that is widely distributed across the Eastern United States and a good bit of Canada. Students of the cultural significance of the Groundhog Day ritual might draw greater interest from Yoder’s consideration of Groundhog Lodges. These locally based fraternal organizations resemble the Elks or the Moose in some ways, but differ in others – not just their regionally specific placement within Pennsylvania, but also the way in which the lodges “help promote and foster the Pennsylvania Dutch language” (p. 77) – along with, of course, their frequent and diligent invocation of all things groundhog.
A chapter titled “Groundhog on the Table” provides many groundhog recipes; I for one was not tempted to try any of them. By contrast, Yoder’s account of the growth and spread of what he dubs “Groundhog Culture” was delightful – an extensive setting-forth of how the Groundhog continues to extend his reach through poetry, songs, and children's books. The songs include many that are set to the tune of various Christmas carols, but – as Yoder published his book in 2003 – they do not include Eminem’s cheerfully profane 2013 hip-hop song “Groundhog Day,” or the songs from the 2016 musical-theatre update of the 1993 film.
Yoder closes by relating Groundhog Day to other examples of weather lore – pointing out instances, both within and outside Pennsylvania, of times when people have tried to read signs from nature, or from dreams, in order to predict the weather. Not all Pennsylvanians, of course, were willing to follow these attempts at divination – a Society of Friends member, or “Quaker,” recorded that in his settlement, “The ground hog was laughed at” (p. 125).
Yet the invocation of weather lore provides an intriguing way for Yoder to conclude his study. In earlier times, the people of predominantly agricultural societies had strong reason for wanting to find a way to predict the weather. An exceptionally long winter, or an extremely hot and dry summer, could disrupt crop production, and could make the difference, for a farm family, between prosperity and destitution – or between life and death. Centuries later, in our post-industrial and technological society, human beings still realize that the weather is something that we cannot control. The Groundhog Day ritual provides a light-hearted reminder of that reality – even if, for most Pennsylvanians and other Americans of today, all that is at stake is the question of when we can put our heavy jackets away.
Published by Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-based Stackpole Books – a Harrisburg-area publisher that excels in publishing Pennsylvania-specific regional material – Yoder’s Groundhog Day is a fun historic and folkloric study, and a heartwarming reminder of the ongoing strength and cohesion of the Pennsylvania German culture that gave Groundhog Day to the world.
Yoder, a folklorist at the University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively about his home state, with particular emphasis on the Pennsylvania German culture that is part of his heritage. It pleased me to be able to note that Penn – with its Ivy League credentials, its awe-inspiring medical and law and business schools, and its laudable outreach to the West Philadelphia community within which it is situated – also excels in regional research regarding Pennsylvania folklore. Benjamin Franklin would be proud, I think.
Beginning with the familiar “Punxsutawney Phil” ritual with which Groundhog Day is so strongly identified, Yoder provides helpful information regarding how the holiday and festival evolved in this modest borough of Western Pennsylvania, to become a media phenomenon presided over by an Inner Circle of formally dressed local luminaries.
The Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day (1993) does receive mention here; and as Yoder is a scholar of his region’s culture, I found it interesting to hear his outlook on the film’s presentation of that culture: “The caricaturing of Punxsutawney’s solid citizenry, especially the top-hatted Inner Circle, making them almost – but not quite – urban Appalachian hillbillies, is highly exaggerated and all part of the fun” (p. 15).
Yoder then goes on to describe how the Groundhog Day ritual that began in Punxsutawney has spread across the country and around the world. I did not know, for example, that other parts of Pennsylvania – Quarryville in Lancaster County, and Doylestown in Bucks County – have their own Groundhog Day rituals. Poor Phil must be looking over his furry little shoulder at those nervy, presumptuous intra-state rivals back east!
With the conscientious scholarly approach that has always characterized his work, Yoder then explores the origins of Groundhog Day. The holiday can be traced back to the medieval Catholic festival of Candlemas (the Feast of Candles) that falls on February 2nd; in Germany, where winters are long and cold, a folkloric tradition evolved, setting forth the idea that the German badger or Dachs would emerge from his burrow on Candlemas. “[I]f the badger encountered sunshine on Candlemas and therefore saw his shadow, he crawled back into his hole to stay for four more weeks, which would be a continuation of winter weather. In America, the four weeks became six” (p. 53) – and in Pennsylvania, where badgers are scarce and groundhogs are abundant, the badger was supplanted by the groundhog, and the Dachstag (“Badger Day”) of the Old Country became the Groundhog Day of the New World.
Yoder dutifully sets forth an account of the taxonomy and behavior of Marmota monax, the groundhog that is widely distributed across the Eastern United States and a good bit of Canada. Students of the cultural significance of the Groundhog Day ritual might draw greater interest from Yoder’s consideration of Groundhog Lodges. These locally based fraternal organizations resemble the Elks or the Moose in some ways, but differ in others – not just their regionally specific placement within Pennsylvania, but also the way in which the lodges “help promote and foster the Pennsylvania Dutch language” (p. 77) – along with, of course, their frequent and diligent invocation of all things groundhog.
A chapter titled “Groundhog on the Table” provides many groundhog recipes; I for one was not tempted to try any of them. By contrast, Yoder’s account of the growth and spread of what he dubs “Groundhog Culture” was delightful – an extensive setting-forth of how the Groundhog continues to extend his reach through poetry, songs, and children's books. The songs include many that are set to the tune of various Christmas carols, but – as Yoder published his book in 2003 – they do not include Eminem’s cheerfully profane 2013 hip-hop song “Groundhog Day,” or the songs from the 2016 musical-theatre update of the 1993 film.
Yoder closes by relating Groundhog Day to other examples of weather lore – pointing out instances, both within and outside Pennsylvania, of times when people have tried to read signs from nature, or from dreams, in order to predict the weather. Not all Pennsylvanians, of course, were willing to follow these attempts at divination – a Society of Friends member, or “Quaker,” recorded that in his settlement, “The ground hog was laughed at” (p. 125).
Yet the invocation of weather lore provides an intriguing way for Yoder to conclude his study. In earlier times, the people of predominantly agricultural societies had strong reason for wanting to find a way to predict the weather. An exceptionally long winter, or an extremely hot and dry summer, could disrupt crop production, and could make the difference, for a farm family, between prosperity and destitution – or between life and death. Centuries later, in our post-industrial and technological society, human beings still realize that the weather is something that we cannot control. The Groundhog Day ritual provides a light-hearted reminder of that reality – even if, for most Pennsylvanians and other Americans of today, all that is at stake is the question of when we can put our heavy jackets away.
Published by Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-based Stackpole Books – a Harrisburg-area publisher that excels in publishing Pennsylvania-specific regional material – Yoder’s Groundhog Day is a fun historic and folkloric study, and a heartwarming reminder of the ongoing strength and cohesion of the Pennsylvania German culture that gave Groundhog Day to the world.
February 2, 2017
This book is very well researched but still quite readable. It is full of history, documented and organized folk lore, and fun descriptions of the Groundhog Festival as it is today. May Phil never see his shadow again.
January 10, 2026
I liked this book a lot! I love the weirdness of the groundhog day holiday, and the book definitely leaned into it. It was both extremely well written and extremely readable. I also loved that every time “groundhog” is mentioned, they capitalize it like he’s a god. Would recommend this easy read for anyone who wants to learn about the history and context of the holiday.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews