Cyclogues: Groundhog Day is a State of Mind
Once Christmas and New Year’s Day pass us by, the character of winter loses much of its holiday charm. We northerners tend to start looking for signs of springtime a little too soon. We start hearing the countdown to when pitchers and catchers are to report for spring training before the combatants in last football season’s Super Bowl are even decided.
Winter itself is in no way the evil season that the snowbirds make it out to be, from their timeshares in places like Florida or Arizona. The frigid temperatures keep our native amphibians and insects to a much less threatening and more manageable size than those in places where it stays warm all the time, like Florida and Arizona. The snowfall gives us opportunities for exercise and recreation that break up the monotony of grassy yard work and beach volleyball with snow shoveling and skiing or ice skating.
But just as I myself can get a little impatient and irritated with lingering heat and humidity by September, the cold darkness starts getting a little old after about a month out from Christmastime.
What Groundhog Day reveals is our desperate need to control; or at least to the extent that we may think we can predict the future. They don’t show their work very well, but something called LetterPile has this to say about the history of Groundhog Day: