Is the Groundhog going to see his shadow or not today?
That is a question everyone asks themselves when the wake up on February 2nd.
But what exactly is the history of Groundhog Day?
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, which is when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
In 1887, a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club declared that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog. The first groundhog’s day was on February 2, 1887.
Check out this video of Phil predicting the 2018 weather:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/groundhog-day-2018-punxsutawney-phil-sees-shadow-weeks/story?id=52790141