Back when I was a graduate student at Berkeley, I hosted the astronomy department Movie Night, which included sending teasers of movies we would screen in the department.  I had a lot of fun with these, but one of my favorites was the one I did for Groundhog Day. I wrote it up here, slightly revised, in 2014 in honor of Harold Ramis, who died that year.

Q:How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?

A:Just as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood.

I post this insight to illuminate one of the many fascinating corners of the cultural phenomenon that is Groundhog Day. Before I explain, let’s lay some groundwork.

Before the arrival of Christianity in parts Europe, many pagan cultures based their annual celebrations on agricultural events associated with the seasons. The most important of these events was often the celebration of the vernal equinox, a rebirth ceremony marking the arrival of baby crops and animals after winter. The other “quarter days”, the autumnal equinox and the winter and summer solstices, were also marked and celebrated (not just by Europeans, but by cultures around the world). Perhaps the most famous example of this practice stands today in the ruins of Stonehenge where the alignment of the stones marks the position of the setting sun on the quarter days. Likewise, the ruins of Tulum in Cozumel, Mexico feature long holes in the stone which, (just like in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) allow sunlight to illuminate a chamber only on one of the quarter days.

In addition to these holidays, cross-quarter days celebrated the days midway between quarter days. Perhaps the most famous relic of the pagan cross-quarter days in Halloween, whose imagery is still totally divorced from the Christian holiday (the Eve of the Feast of All Saints or “All Hallow’s Eve’n”), that attempted to supplant it. You see, the Roman Catholic Church, as it spread across Europe, associated many Christian holidays with these quarter and cross-quarter holidays in an attempt to ease pagans into the faith. Thus, Saturnalia and Yuletide became Christmas, the vernal equinox celebrations (complete with those images of fertility, rabbits and eggs) became Easter, All Saint’s Day supplanted the precursors to Halloween, and the 2nd of February, midway between the winter solstice and vernal equinox, became Candlemas.

Candlemas, or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, marks the 40th day after the birth of Christ and the day, under Mosaic law, that Mary went to the temple to be purified after the birth of a son.  The pagan traditions and symbolism remained, however, as Candlemas offered a convenient marker than spring was six weeks away. Scottish tradition held that the weather on this day foretold whether spring would come early or late that year:

If Candlemas day be dry and fair,
The half o’ winter to come and mair,
If Candlemas day be wet and foul,
The half of winter’s gone at Yule.

I guess it rhymes in a Scottish accent.

Anyway, tradition holds that Roman legions brought this rule of thumb to the Germans, who associated it with the hedgehog and its shadow (since if shadows were cast on that day then “Candlemas day be dry and fair” and winter is only halfway over).  From there, the Pennsylvania Dutch (as in “Deutsch”, not as in Holland) brought the tradition to the New World, but were frustrated by the lack of hedgehogs here. To compensate, they pinned the predictive power on the local equivalent, the woodchuck (or “groundhog”).

To this day, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club of Punxsutawney, PA promotes their local woodchuck, Phil, and every 2nd of February gathers around him as he emerges from is hole with television crews which record the event for filler segments on news broadcasts across the country.Then in 1993, Harold Ramis overthrew thousands of years of reverent tradition with  “Groundhog Day”, a film about a weatherman, who, disgruntled at being upstaged and out-predicted by Punxsutawney Phil, is damned by the gods to repeat his day of shame until he learns the true meaning of love and, I guess, Groundhog Day.

As a result, a popular reference to Groundhog Day is now more likely to refer to a repetitive daily routine or eerie repeat of a previous experience than to the ancient February 2nd holiday. It is a true testament to the power of the cultural force of Harold Ramis that his film so effortlessly supplanted and all but erased millennia of Christian and pagan tradition.

In my book, that makes “Groundhog Day” one of the most influential films ever made.

It’s certainly compulsively watchable.