Sometimes, the weather has a way of playing nasty games with my mentality. Looking out the window on a Monday morning and seeing gray clouds outside my window doesn't exactly make me happy inside, but that feeling is multiplied by 187452872490 times when half an hour later my roommate runs inside complaining of heavy snow. Now, snow by itself isn't really that awful. It covers everything in white and sparkles on the ground like pixie dust that Tinkerbell had the misfortune of losing. It's more the dark skies and bleak forecasts that can take my mood from sunk to funk in a relatively short period of time.
And then there are days like today. There isn't a cloud in the brilliantly blue sky! The sun is showing its much missed face, brightening up every corner of my world. Granted, the temperature is still on the nippy side and there are snow piles which have turned to melting ice blocks all over parking lots and sidewalks, but how can I complain when the world is such a beautiful place again! Did I mention the high today is 41 degrees? That's practically balmy! Really, winter is looking better all the time.
The one thing I'm dreading next week is the awful folklore tradition of Groundhog day. WHY WOULD ANYONE LET A GROUNDHOG PREDICT THE WEATHER!?!? I mean, really! What possible knowledge of meteorology could a rodent the size of a small dog have? And if the shadow of the groundhog is supposed to be the indicator, can't we just give the animal a little shade to make sure there IS no shadow? As much as I'm coming to enjoy the blue skies and melting snow of this mild winter, I don't know if I could handle another six weeks of it just because an overgrown brown squirrel who lives underground gets scared. Maybe if everyone ignores the mammal then spring will come sooner all on its own. Wouldn't that be nice? Better yet, we could invent a new tradition for February 2nd. What if we had a goldfish swim in a glass bowl: If he swims in three counter-clockwise circles in a row, then that means spring will come three weeks after the first bird home from Italy sings a three note song in the middle of a mountain pass somewhere in Switzerland. That could work, right?
Okay. Maybe not. I'm just ready for spring. I suppose it'll come on its own whether the groundhog says so or not. Silly groundhog! Weather is for goldfish!
Enjoying the sunshine,
LoMo
Hey, come on: quit picking on the poor little groundhogs!
ReplyDeleteWhat's now called Groundhog Day was originally the Irish, pagan festival of Imbolc (meaning "in the belly"), also called Brigid's Day (named after the goddess Brigid), celebrated on Feb. 1 or 2, halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. It's been celebrated for perhaps 4,000 years: at the stone monument on the Hill of Tara in County Meath, Ireland, "the inner chamber of the passage tomb is aligned with the rising sun on the dates of Imbolc and Samhain [in the Fall]." Imbolc was a time to celebrate that spring would soon come.
A few thousand years later, when Christianity spread to Ireland, then as the Christian clerics normally did, they absorbed pagan deities and holidays into their own rituals, calling Brigid "Saint Brigid of Kildare" and renaming Imbolc as "Candlemas", a feast dedicated to "Saint" Brigid. But Candlemas was still a celebration of the forthcoming spring, as illustrated with the old British saying: "If Candlemas Day be bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year."
Those Pagan / Irish / British / Christian traditions were mixed with German attempts to try to predict the weather from the hibernation habits of bears and badgers. Upon finding few bears and badgers in Pennsylvania, German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the 1800s started bugging the poor little, hibernating groundhogs. Clymer Freas (the editor of the Pennsylvania newspaper the Punxsutawney Spirit) became interested in the immigrants' attempts to predict the onset of spring using groundhogs and renamed Imbolc (or Candlemas) "Groundhog Day".
Thus, it's not the forecasting abilities of the groundhogs that should be criticized, but (once again) the dumb behaviors of people. What we should do is return to the pagan tradition of celebrating that, on Feb. 2, we've made it past the halfway point of winter, we're no longer in winter's belly; soon, it'll be spring.
Well I still don't have like it! Especially when the temperature drops to zero the day of! ***grumble grumble grumble***
ReplyDeleteI WONDER…
ReplyDeleteI wonder what happened to our little skunk
Who posts at the blog titled “Beating the Funk”.
I’ve not heard a word; her postings have shrunk;
Perhaps she’s not well – or perpetually drunk!
I wonder if I was too much of a lunk,
Perhaps I offended by posting my bunk:
Offended by me, could her spirits have sunk?
If so, I admit that my comments were junk!
Perhaps she’s just busy, not wanting to flunk
The classes she skipped and classes she slunk.
Yet given the obvious (she has plenty of spunk),
Perhaps it’s just simply: she’s beaten her funk!