“It’s Groundhog Day and maybe life is on a loop

But I miss my burrow, I miss my coop

So I’m headed back down! There’s a shadow up here!

Get ready for 6 more weeks of winter this year!”

The declaration was met with cheers by over forty thousand people in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on a cold morning just last month. Most of them had been waiting in the cold for hours, while millions of others watched the proceedings live on television or streaming on the Internet.

Punxsutawney Phil, the immortal groundhog meteorologist, had seen his shadow, which meant that there would be six more weeks of winter.

    Photo: ACE HARDWARE. February 2025.

If you’ve never tumbled into a Groundhog Day rabbit hole—or, in this case, a groundhog burrow—like I have, here’s everything you need to know: every year on February 2nd, the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil leaves his burrow in Gobbler’s Knob in the tiny town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to predict the weather. If he doesn’t see his shadow, spring will arrive early. If he does, the winter will go on for six more weeks.

Then, there’s everything you don’t need to know, but that you might like to anyway: every summer since at least 1887, Phil has taken an “elixir of life” that magically extends his lifespan by seven years, making him over 139 years old today. He speaks in ‘groundhogese,’ a language only the current president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle can understand. He has a wife named Phyllis, and they introduced twins just last year, a boy and a girl named Shadow and Sunny.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Though Groundhog Day is now primarily celebrated in the United States and Canada, it has Pagan origins. According to Dan Yoder, folklorist and author of the 2003 book Groundhog Day, the festival of Imbolc symbolised one of the four seasonal turning points in the Celtic year, falling midway between a solstice and an equinox. It was traditionally a day meant to look ahead to the next season, foretelling the weather and family fortunes of the year. But even after Western Europeans were Christianised, the practice was so important to their cultural sense of time that the Church ‘baptised’ it into a Christian holiday. It therefore became Candlemas, or the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, in the Catholic Church.

Traditionally, Candlemas—Candeleur in French and Candelaria in Spanish—is a day when people bring their candles to church to be blessed, but the weather prediction element continued past its folk roots. In a poem written by John Ray in 1678: 

“If Candlemas day be fair and bright

Winter will have another flight

If on Candlemas day it be showre and rain

Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Therefore, clear skies on Candlemas Day meant more weeks of winter, while cloudy skies heralded an early spring.

Why the groundhog, then? In the parts of Europe that used to be Celtic in ancient times, Germans who celebrated Candlemas believed that a badger predicted the weather. Instead of Candlemas, they called it Dachstag or Badger Day. The legend went as such: Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmeßwoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche. If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole. 

As stores of food became more scarce as winter progressed, it’s said that these communities relied heavily on hibernating animals’ behaviour to predict how much longer the winter would last. This belief aligns with the animal they chose to be their weather prophet: the badger, which retires for winter sleep until sometime in February, when it reemerges to look for food and prepare for the breeding season.

So, when the Pennsylvania Dutch—immigrants from German-speaking areas of Europe—settled in the United States, they brought their traditions along with them. But instead of the badger, they chose another small, furry, hibernating, forest-dwelling mammal: the woodchuck, otherwise known as the groundhog.

The first documented mention of groundhogs predicting the weather is in a diary entry written by James L. Morris, a Welsh-American storekeeper in Pennsylvania in 1840. “Today the Germans say the groundhog comes out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he returns in and remains there 40 days.”

German communities in Pennsylvania evidently continued this tradition over the years, because in 1886 the newspaper Punxsutawney Spirit wrote, “Today is groundhog day, and up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow.” A year later, residents hiked to Gobbler’s Knob, Phil’s “official” home, for the first time to witness his prediction. Thus, Groundhog Day was born.

So, what do the residents of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, actually do on Groundhog Day? Unfortunately, it used to be pretty grim.

Around the same time Pennsylvanians started making the trek to visit the prognosticating groundhog, members of the Punxsutawney Elk Lodge were served groundhog meat to eat. They organised an annual hunting party and held Groundhog Picnics as well as Groundhog Feasts throughout the year for those seeking to get more adventurous with their palate. But after a few decades, they weren’t able to drum up enough public interest, and the hunt was discontinued, keeping groundhog meat officially off the menu. 

Thank goodness it did, too, because the furry weather forecaster’s fame was steadily growing across the nation. Funnily enough, Clymer Freas, a Punxsutawney Spirit editor who was part of a groundhog hunting club himself, would later be known as the ‘father’ of Groundhog Day after declaring Phil to be the only weather forecasting groundhog worth paying attention to in the papers. 

Source: VisitPAGO.com

Gone are the days when one could catch a groundhog predicting the weather in the morning and have groundhog meat served on a plate only several hours later. These days, one needs only gather at Gobbler’s Knobb on February 2nd to watch Phil emerge from his burrow: a thick tree stump with a latched door carved out of its trunk and a little green plaque above it that reads, ‘PHIL.’ The festivities start as early as 3:30 a.m. for enthusiasts eager to wait in the freezing cold for a chance to see Phil up close. To kill time, they enjoy fireworks, live music, local artisans and craft vendors, and rows of food trucks.

Four hours later, members of the Inner Circle coax Phil out of his stump to share his prediction with the world. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle—created by members of the aforementioned woodchuck-eating lodge—comprises 15 members who, per the official Groundhog Club website, are tasked with protecting and perpetuating the legend of Punxsutawney Phil. The Inner Circle hosts the festivities every year, donning tuxedos and top hats on the big day when they help interpret Phil’s weather prediction. This year, they presented Phil with two prophetic scrolls, and his choice was communicated to the Inner Circle president, Tom Dunkel, whose role as president earned him possession of a magic acacia cane that allowed him to speak Phil’s native ‘groundhogese.’ 

But Phil wasn’t always called Phil. 

Prior to being known as Phil, he was called Br’er Groundhog or simply The Punxsutawney Groundhog. But according to the Groundhog Club, Phil was supposedly named after King Philip. But which King Philip? Germany’s King Philip from over eight centuries ago? Perhaps the one from France, Greece, or even Spain? No further details were provided.

However, the way the story goes is that in 1953, 66 years after the first official Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney sent two baby groundhogs to the Griffith Park Zoo in Los Angeles, named after Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The California Department of Agriculture rejected them, calling them “agricultural pests” and demanding they be “destroyed.”

Pennsylvanians had no choice but to take it as a personal insult, with the Groundhog Club going so far as to say they were “executed,” claiming that killing these groundhogs was “an insult to the royal family.” They worried that this incident would cause complications with England, so they decided to contact the State Department. There is no record of how the state responded, but eight years later, “Punxsutawney Phil” appeared in the newspapers for the first time, presumably done to honour the poor murdered groundhogs.

Regardless of where he had gotten it, the name stuck. But although Dunkel insists there’s “only ever been one Santa Claus, one Easter Bunny, and one Phil,” Phil has had his fair share of copycats—or rather, copyhogs. 

Among them is Potomac Phil, a stuffed groundhog who also communicates his predictions to an Inner Circle of people in top hats, but unlike Phil, he makes predictions about the weather and the political climate. There’s Shubenacadie Sam, who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, and has almost four thousand followers on X (previously Twitter). And then you also have animal weather forecasters that aren’t groundhogs at all, like Ohio’s Concord Casimir, that predicts the coming weather by how he eats his yearly pierogis. 

While Phil’s status as the original is undisputed, he doesn’t have the greatest track record with his predictions. Much like this year’s prediction, he almost always foretells a longer winter. He’s predicted an early spring only 20 times in recorded history, the latest one being last year. The Groundhog Club insists he’s 100% accurate, but studies claim that Phil’s only had a 35% success rate. According to research made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the most reliable groundhogs are Staten Island Chuck of New York, Georgia’s General Beauregard Lee, and Lander Lil from Wyoming, with accuracy rates of 85%, 80%, and 75%, respectively.

But the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club maintains that these other prognosticators are only impostors—not that it’s done anything to quell Phil’s fame. While Phil has always been beloved, it wasn’t until the 1993 movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell that his popularity skyrocketed to new heights. Crowds soared from about 2,000 to an average of 10,000 after the movie came out, with people all around the world gathering to catch even the smallest glimpse of the immortal groundhog.

It’s true that groundhogs in captivity only have a life expectancy of 14 years. But it’s also true that Punxsutawney Phil is immortal. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

His secret? Once a year at the club’s annual summer picnic, Phil drinks a “super secret” concoction dubbed “The Elixir of Life.” Every sip gives him seven years, and he drinks three or four sips each year. The elixir, mixed by his handler and made up of ingredients from the wilds of Pennsylvania, is designed specifically for him and doesn’t work on anyone else—not on humans, other animals, or even other groundhogs. “Only on Phil because he is special,” says Dunkel, Inner Circle president.

But surely he wouldn’t be condemned to a lonely, solitary life for all of eternity? Doesn’t his wife, Phyllis, get the elixir too? According to an interview Dunkel had with the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year, she does not.

If you also think this is cruel and unfair, you wouldn’t be the only one. Michael Venos, who runs the Countdown to Groundhog Day website, created a petition in 2022 to give Phyllis the elixir of life, too. “The Groundhog Club can just take a little extra time and pick a few extra dandelions to make the potion,” he said. “Keeping his family together will make for a happier Phil and allow him to perform his Groundhog Day duties to the best of his abilities.” The petition now only has 7 signatures out of its goal of 10. Well, 8 signatures now that I’ve signed it too.

Venos also made a startling discovery: before Phyllis, there was Philomena.

In February 1984, Philadelphia radio station WIOQ-FM sent a 4-year-old groundhog from the Philadelphia Zoo to Punxsutawney to be mated with Phil. Their wedding was presided over by Common Pleas Court Judge Edwin Snyder and announced in the zoo’s member magazine. According to the article, Philomena was sent after the zoo learnt that Phil needed a new mate, as his previous mate, Phyllis, had died.

There’s something undoubtedly sinister about Phil getting to live forever with a rotation of Phyllises and Philomenas on hand. In his petition, Venos wrote, “It’s not like Punxsutawney Phil is an action star who needs a new love interest every single movie. He’s not James Bond, Indiana Jones, or even Austin Powers. This is real life! There’s absolutely no reason not to give [Phyllis] a sip of a magical potion that will prolong her life indefinitely. There’s absolutely no reason to allow [Phyllis] to die when the key to giving her eternal life is readily available.”

At the very least, we know Phil’s monogamous, as he only remarries when his partner dies. Admittedly, he isn’t given a lot of time to grieve, not when he’s sent a new groundhog almost immediately afterwards to take her place, all while bearing the name of a previous ex-wife. None of it does much to inspire romance.

Source: Yahoo! News

However, it’s clear that Phil’s relationship with his current wife, Phyllis, is unlike anything he’s ever had. According to Josh Farcus, a member of the Inner Circle, the couple has been living in the groundhog zoo at Punxsutawney Memorial Library for the past 45 years—which means he either meant that Phil has had multiple Phyllises living with him since, or that this Phyllis has a lifespan much longer than expected of a regular groundhog. Phil also became a first-time father last year with the surprise arrival of twin baby groundhogs, a girl and a boy named Sunny and Shadow, respectively. 

Typically, male groundhogs will copulate with female groundhogs and stay with them almost throughout the pregnancy. Once the female is close to giving birth, though, the male will leave her to give birth by herself. This clearly isn’t the case with Phil, who has stayed with Phyllis long after the twins were born and has helped her parent them. Though it’s the bare minimum, it’s nice to see Phil being such a hands-on father.

While I’m usually not a big advocate for nepotism, now that Phil has offspring of his own, I had expected Phil to retire eventually and hand over the mantle to one of them. But Tom Dunkel says that the twins won’t be going into the family business, as Phil will live forever. They also won’t be receiving the elixir of life, destined to live out “normal groundhog lives” instead.

If the week I spent reading countless articles, combing through archives, and finding all I could about this beloved, furry supercentenarian has taught me anything, it’s that people love a tradition. People love coming together once a year. People love being in on the joke. People love being reminded that at a time when it might feel like all hope seems lost, there will always be something certain and hopeful they can rely on.

In just about every article, forum, and comment section I came across, people were fully committing to the bit. They knew Phil’s lore and watched the live stream every year. They argued about his predictions and critiqued his immortality. Phil was more like an old friend than a small, furry celebrity, especially one that’s been here longer than any of us have been alive and will survive us long after we’re gone.

It’s easy, then, to ask what the point of Punxsutawney Phil and Groundhog Day is. But to that I ask, “Why not?” Sincerity has become increasingly rare now that casual cruelty and disdain can be found everywhere you look. Why not let people find comfort in something so earnestly fun and whimsical? Why not let an immortal groundhog predict the weather?

Frankly, my grievances about his personal life aside, I find that I’ve developed a personal, comforting connection to Phil’s yearly predictions myself. Much like Phil, I also miss my burrow. I, too, miss my coop. So I’ll gladly follow his lead and stay inside where it’s warm, if only for a little while longer, and hope spring comes early next year.