Groundhog Day – or Not

 

I don’t understand Groundhog Day, not being American. I thought, because of the movie, it meant the same things happening over and over: one day endlessly repeated. But Frank Tassone, using it as a poetry prompt at dVerse, tells us it’s the day when the behaviour of a groundhog is used to forecast either coming Spring or a return to Winter. 

Puzzling. Spring always arrives, doesn't it, sooner later? 

But then he connects it to the Christian holiday, Candlemass, which he tells us is about anticipating when to plant seeds. Aha! so the ‘sooner or later’ of Spring’s arrival is the point.

I look up Candlemass for more detail. Instead, Google takes me straight to an account of the Pagan festival of Imbolc. 

Ah yes, same date. Now I get it! (Sometimes one has to dive a little deeper.)

That, however, is not quite the end of the story. Not for me. Here in Australia we have just come out the other side of a heatwave – not the only one we’ll get this Summer, I fully expect. Here, we are six months away from Imbolc. We have been celebrating Lughnasadh (aka Lammas). Well, some of us have. For Pagans, it’s a time to be thankful for the bounty of nature and the gifts from agriculture.

If we were to have a Groundhog Day here, it couldn’t be now. 

late summer –

we celebrate with bread

the good harvest