Whimsical Groundhog Day restores faith in the cosmos
Feb. 2 is Groundhog Day, if you glimpse something poking around your trash bin, if this Pennsylvanian mammal/rodent yawns in your yard before poking back into its underground retreat and continues its hibernation.
According to legend, its choice of whether to go back to its bed or get up with a low growl determines or indicates that “spring will be a little late this year” or not. Sooner, or tardier.
The song with those lyrics dates back only to 1943, the middle of World War II, and those words expressed the anxiety and nostalgia of that wartime, with its loneliness and melancholy mood mixing hope and despair like a cocktail with bitters.
The origin of the whimsical holiday, dating back much earlier on your calendar, goes back to our rural regard for the uncertainty of the weather, and the dream of flowers in bloom under the long awaited sunbeams. I like it and bring it up among the first days of February precisely because it really doesn’t mean much at all, and that is precisely what appeals to me, the way the world is going.
Any hope for peace in the human realm? Not unless, like the proverbial “groundhog,” we take the fact of our shared planet more profoundly and seriously! My immigrant grandmother used to toast or salute with the blessing “Peace on the Voild!” That’s the way she pronounced the name, and she had two soldier sons with flags in the windows. (They did come home, one on crutches and the other deeply disturbed, and the brothers would bow to each other whenever they met, one from Europe and the other from Asia, with respect and with irony.)
So, Groundhog Day, silly as it may strike you, spells and says quite a story to the likes of me! Until and unless we take better and gentler care of our portion of the cosmos, Groundhog Day remains a jester’s joke, but ....
Mike Fink, a retired Rhode Island School of Design professor and occasional contributor, lives in Providence.