JANUARY - here in the Northeast we are knee deep in winter. One of the few things to look forward to is the annual prediction of the underground weatherman. All you never wanted to know about
the GROUNDHOG.
GROUNDHOG DAY: A SHADOWY CELEBRATION
On February second Groundhog Day is celebrated. It's not
every
animal who has its own holiday or who has such a reputation
as
a prognosticator of weather. Or to put
it another way, why do
otherwise
sane people get up before dawn in the dead of winter
and
walk to the top of a hill looking for a groundhog burrow?
Why
do we do what we do?
Marmota monax, groundhog, a member
of the rodent family, is
distinguished
only by his once a year appearance on February 2nd
to
predict the arrival of spring. To
clear up any confusion groundhogs and woodchucks are both
Marmota
monax. Woodchuck comes from a
mispronounced Native
American
word ”wuchuk” or ”otcheck” which may have to do with the
tongue
twister usually brought up in conjunction with him: How
much
wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
wood? Or, if you've practiced that one, how much ground
could a
groundhog
hog if a groundhog would hog ground.
The groundhog/woodchuck is a weed eater - grasses,
plantain,
clover,
common in the northeastern United States and Southern
Canada. He loves the early morning and the late
afternoon sun.
I
often see one who sits on a fence post and watches traffic
going
by on the expressway. I had an idea
about a groundhog love
affair
broken up by the New York State Department of
Transportation. She lived beyond the northbound lane and he
lived
over the median past the southbound lane.
Perhaps that is
one
explanation for the number of dead groundhogs on our
highways. They are a common sight roadside, a brown
bundle
appearing
to wear a red corsage, which is soon pounded to the
color
of concrete.
Not as fast on his feet as his cousin
the squirrel, the
groundhog
is slow moving, but feisty when aroused.
I've seen one
rise
hissing on his hind legs to fight off a dog.
He looked
formidable
indeed. They are not overly bright, but
don't seem to
do
much harm unless you have an alfalfa field overrun by them.
Farmers
tell me they burrow under a field
undermining it so
badly
that when you drive a tractor over the field, you
find
yourself capsized, the big front wheels sitting in a roomy
grasslined
den.
Gardeners complain that young shoots
and leaves become an
attraction
for groundhogs, as well as rabbits, but contend that
while
rabbits nibble, groundhogs act like pigs, chomping through
a row of vegetables or herbs until there is nothing left. The
worst
thing about them is their catholic diet.
Vicious gardeners
retaliate
with rifles, or gas bombs.
Groundhogs usually mate in February
or March and within a
month
a litter of four or five babies are born.
By mid summer
the
family disperses and searches out new burrows and begins to
eat
to put on a layer of fat for the long sleep. In fall, the
groundhog
enters his burrow and closes it up. He
curls into a
ball,
head between the legs, arms folded around the neck and goes
to
sleep. The body temperature drops to
between 40 and 50
degrees,
the pulse is faint, respiration slows, and the long
winter
passes by overhead while the groundhog sleeps like the
dead. He can neither feel nor hear and it would
take several
hours
in a very warm place to awaken him.
Early
settlers found groundhogs tasty especially in groundhog
stew,
and if you ever visit Punxsutawney, PA, for the
Prognosticalion
festivities you can purchase a groundhog cook
book
or two although this seems rather cannabalistic for a town
that
made its reputation on the groundhog's annual predictions.
Historians guess that the groundhog
came into modern
folklore
via the German settlement of Pennsylvania and their
belief
that the badger of their native land would predict good or
bad
luck for sowing and planting. Badgers,
nowhere as docile as
the
native groundhogs, were soon replaced.
Others suggest it was
the hedgehog who predicted, equally truculent and harder to
handle
than the badger. So it seems that
prognostication fell to
the
groundhog because of its reputation as an easy going, easy to
catch,
easy to handle, animal, or are there other reasons.
In Druid Britain of 2000 to 3000 years ago there
were four
main
holidays. Because Druids worshiped the
sun, their holidays were the four
main
turning points of the year. They were
fine accurate
astronomers. The year ended at All Saints Day or November
first.
All
the fires were extinguished and new ones built (fires, little
suns).
The other holidays were May Day on May
first (Beltaine) when
the
sun began to grow strong; August first (Lugnasad) when it was
at
its peak; and February first (Imbolc) when it was about as far
away
as it would ever get. These dates are
the halfway points
between
the solstices (6/21 and 12/21) and the equinoxes (3/21
and
9/21). Since the Druids liked three-day
holidays as much as
we
love do, it's not hard to assume that the
festivities
on Imbolc drifted over onto the day after.
Imbolc was associated with the
sacred flames that purified
the
land and encouraged fertility and the emergence of the sun
from
its winter sleep. On February first
rites of
prognostication
were held. A great bonfire was built on
a
hilltop
and all the young men made their mark or name on a white
stone
which was placed in the fire. When the
fire cooled, each
man
searched for his stone and if he didn't find it, if the fire
had taken it, he had been chosen for the supreme honor. He had
been
selected by Bel (the sun god) to offer his life/spirit to be
sacrificed
for the purification and general good of the tribe.
This
bears close association with Shirley Jackson's short story
of
the scapegoat, "The Lottery."
The one who is chosen to be sacrificed for the good
of the
tribe,
the offering, fertilizes the fields for the coming
planting
time. This is a common motif of early
agricultural
societys’
religious practices. Until the 1800's
this February
ritual
was observed in the Highlands of Scotland only 'the chosen
one'
jumped over or ran between the bonfires in a metaphor of a
metaphor. (Bonfire is said to be an elision of ”bone
fire” by
etymologists).
Imbolc is also associated with the
lambing season when the
sheep
lactated and was sometimes called ”oimelc” which means
”sheep's
milk”. This is related to the fertility
aspect of the
mother
goddess Brigit or Brigantia (High One, in Celtic), a
respected
member of the Druid's pantheon, daughter of Dana, the
female
principle. Brigit was the goddess of
prophecy and
divination
as well as fertility, home, hearth, and healing.
February
1st was the day sacred to Brigit.
The similarity of dates, that point in temperate
climates
where
the sun is as far away from the earth as it will ever be
and
at its weakest, six weeks between the formal turning points
of
our solar year make the connection between Druids and groundhog
"predictions.”
Also, there is the relationship between
the
groundhog and mother goddess cults, and
the synchronistic
tendency
of the Romans to adapt local gods to their own, a
practice
which was kept by the Roman Catholic Church which was
busy
'civilizing' the known world.
In the Roman Catholic pantheon of saints there
is a St.
Brigit
who enters about 400 to 500 A.D. St.
Brigit was said to
have
been born at sunrise on February 1st.
She became one of the
patron
saints of Ireland and at Kildare she founded the first
nunnery. The nuns of St. Brigit in Kildare tended a
holy fire
(like
Rome's Vestal Virgins) up until the monastaries were
destroyed
by Henry VIII in 1539.
One of the legends about St. Brigit
is the story of a blind
nun
for whom Brigit restored sight. When the
nun Dara saw, she
realized
that the clarity of sight blurred God in the eye of her
soul
and asked to be returned to the beauty of darkness. The
Druids
were especially fond of riddles such as this which are
based
on reversals.
The saint was said to have bathed in milk (lamb's
milk?) at
birth
and her house appeared to be on fire (born of the flame).
She
is revered as the midwife of the Virgin Mary (the mother of
the
lamb).
Candlemas Day (February 2nd)
commemorates the purification
of
the Virgin Mary. According to Jewish law
Mary was required to
go
to the temple in Jerusalem to be purified forty days after
the
birth of Jesus (the winter solstice) and to present him to
God. Luke tells us that he was "a
light to lighten the
Gentiles.
. . ." For Roman Catholics February
2nd is also the
time
for blessing of candles for the altar and the congregation
used
to march through the church holding lighted tapers
representing
the entry of Christ, the Light of the World, into
the
Temple in Jerusalem.
In Celtic
folklore candles are used for divination or to
keep
evil spirits away with a circle of flame.
They are of
course,
the little suns. Long after the last Druid had gone to
his
fiery reward, farmers circled the fields carrying torches to
keep
the evil spirits away and purify the field for the seed.
Burning
off the fields in spring is a ritual that only recently
ended
with local anti-burning ordinances.
The French scholar Joseph Vendryes
suggests that Candlemas
is
patterned on the Roman Lustrations (feast of purification held
in
early February) commemorating the actions of the earth mother
goddess
Ceres (or Demeter) who sought her daughter Persephone (or
Kore)
("European Religions, Ancient" 767).
Persephone had been
kidnapped
by Pluto (Dis or Hades), the lord of the underworld
(darkness),
and Ceres, distraught, neglected her earthly duties
so
that darkness fell over the earth and all the vegetation died
while
she hunted for her daughter. When
Persephone returned from
the
underworld, spring came to the earth and life began again.
Freed
from the dark realm of Pluto, Persephone brought spring to
the
world but because she had eaten six seeds of the pomegranate,
she was required to spend six months in each realm.
According to Thomas Bulfinch's
rendition of the tale, during
her
search for Persephone, Ceres had made a promise to the son of
a
family who had befriended her in her grief.
She had promised
to
teach him the use of the plough and how to sow seed. She
taught
him about the grains and agriculture and he was to teach
mankind. Triptolemus built a temple for Ceres in
Eleusis and she
was
worshiped under the name of the Eleusinian
mysteries. Bulfinch calls the fable an
allegory,
signifying the seed corn which appears to be dead,
is buried under the ground (resides with
Pluto), and is reborn.
.Agricultural
societies were fascinated with the miracle of the
seed. A dull piece of matter, a tiny pellet which
appeared to
have
no life at all was buried in the earth at the right time
(this
is all important) and it comes back to life.
This is why
we
bury our dead in the ground like seeds.
The groundhog was sacred to many
earth mother cults because
he
lived burrowed in the earth. He appeared
to die (hibernating)
and
in the spring was born again much like the seed. Bears were
also
sacred and for the same reason, but I don't intend to burrow
any
deeper into this aspect.
When the days lengthen, when winter
lets go of the earth the
Great
Mother or her representative will let you know when it's
time to plant just as the lengthening daylight hours let the seed
know
it's time to begin the cycle of growth.
And so the old weather rhyme passed down from Druid
times :
If
Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come
winter, have another flight.
If
Candlemas brings clouds and rain
Go
winter, and come not back again. These
agricultural societies lived much closer to the edge of
survival
than we do. Crop failure, bad weather,
were not just
financial
disaster, but starvation, death. Good
weather meant
everything
and they were willing to sacrifice much for it.
One of the most important jobs then
of the Druid priests was
to
predict the proper time to plant. Since
rhyme was holy
to
the Druids we might assume these old rhymes are adaptations
of
memorable predictions.
In the northeast United States, already six weeks in
the
dark
grasp of winter, Punxsutawney Phil comes out of his
Pennsylvania
burrow on the top of Gobbler's Knob and makes his
prediction. If he sees his shadow, he's scared back into
his
hole. So we should all have the good sense to be
afraid of the
dark
in us. If he sees only the gray winter
sky, spring will
come
soon. Their predictions have become an
amusing story for
a
slow news day..
Punxsutawney Phil has been predicting for 103 years
(or
his descendants since ten years is a good long life for a
groundhog). Young men in the Highlands of Scotland were
still building
bonfires
in the middle of the 19th century to celebrate the
immanent
return of the sun, and who knows how long ago the Celtic
peoples
of Europe gathered to hear the Druid priests interpret
the
signs and rhyme the results.
One way or another, we drag the past
with us. It casts a long shadow.
