THERE was a film doing the rounds a year or two ago called Grnundhog Day. It concerns a TV weatherman for the presumably fictitious Channel 9 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who is sent to a small town called Punxsutawney to report on the festivities of the day from which the film takes its name.
The rest of the story, quite irrelevant to this column except insofar as it unfolds to the tune of the catchy number I'm Your Weatherman, has our hero condemned to re live the same day over and over again ad nauseam; a sentence which has its disadvantage, but which works wonders for his skills at weather forecasting.
In the United States, Groundhog Day is tomorrow, February 2nd. We in Europe know it as Candlemas, and there are many traditions in folklore about its weather, most of them to the effect that good conditions on that day are, paradoxically, a sure sign that the worst of the winter is yet to come.
The idea is encapsulated, for example, in the rhyme:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight;
But if Candlemas brings clouds and rain
Winter is gone and won't come again.
It would seem as if the Candlemas tradition crossed to the New World as a stowaway - aboard the Mayflower, but has subsequently been transposed to the behaviour of a large, and apparently edible, rodent called the groundhog.
The groundhog hibernates, and the story goes that on February 2nd each year he emerges from his burrow. If the weather is dull, he goes about his waking business in his normal way; if, on the other hand, he sees his shadow - if the sun is shining on that day, in other words - he slinks back into his den and remains there for six more weeks until the inevitable spell of cold, wintry weather has passed away.
The citizens of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, have made their own the prognostic skills of the groundhog, or of "Punxsutawney Phil" as they like to call him locally. It began on February 2nd, 1887, when seven Punxsutawney, men formed themselves into the Groundhog Club, and retired to Gobbler's Knob, a hill outside the town, to drink copious draughts of beer and watch for groundhogs.
Their annual excursion led to the adoption by Punxsutawney of the rodent and his predictive expertise, and to the town becoming the soi-disant "Weather Capital of the World" every February 2nd, with great accompanying festivities and celebration.