Did ya ever get that feeling? That “I swear I just did this and now I’m doing it all over again” feeling? It’s sorta like that “I swear I wrote this back in 2007 and now I’m writing it all over again” feeling. That’s so weird…<\/p>\n
1) February 2nd is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox.<\/p>\n
2) Early pagan farmers paid homage to this moment with the hope of ensuring a good planting season ahead. They’d build a bonfire and roast a virgin or two.<\/p>\n
3) Christians disapproved of such things, so naturally they co-opted it. They named it “Candlemas” and instead of a virgin they suggested everybody burn a candle in the window. Sweet.<\/p>\n
4) If the sun made an appearance on that day, the candle would throw a shadow. For some counter-intuitive reason, they felt this would signify there would be a longer winter of “six more weeks” and the cold would last until the Equinox, on March 21.<\/p>\n
5) When Europeans came to America, they found that the Delaware Indians of Pennsylvania believed their ancestor to be “Wojak, the groundhog.”<\/p>\n
6) As good Christians, they disapproved of such things, so naturally they co-opted it. They named it “Woodchuck” and suggested everyone keep an eye out for one to pop out of the ground like a candle.<\/p>\n
7) The name Punxsutawney comes from the Delaware, “ponksad-uteney” which means “the town of the sandflies.” Which for some odd reason makes it the perfect place to host a bizarre Pagan\/Indian\/Christian agricultural ritual.<\/p>\n
8) The town officially commercialized the day in 1886.<\/p>\n
9) Punxsutawney Phil weighs 15 pounds. Instead of wild grasses (his natural diet) he eats dog food and ice cream. He lives in the town library.<\/p>\n
10) Since records have been kept, “Shadow” has outscored “No Shadow” 100-16.<\/p>\n
Wow, Groundhog Day is so interesting. So many cool facts! Some of which – I don’t know – seem oddly familiar. That’s so weird…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Did ya ever get that feeling? That “I swear I just did this and now I’m doing it all over again” feeling? It’s sorta like that “I swear I wrote this back in 2007 and now I’m writing it all over again” feeling. That’s so weird… 1) February 2nd is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[204,337,400,526,1002,1140],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8","tag-candlemas","tag-delaware-indians","tag-equinox","tag-groundhog-day","tag-punxsutawney-phil","tag-solstice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}