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“If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, there’ll be two winters in the year.”
            An old Scottish Couplet

Candlemas Day is, according to The Unofficial Groundhogese Dictionary published in l994 by The Spirit Publishing Company, the ancient name for February 2, signifying the official midpoint of winter. February second is a "cross-quarter" day, about halfway between the winter solstice in December and the vernal equinox in March. It's not far from the time many groundhogs end their hibernation anyway, around the second week of February.

As tradition has it, this is also the day groundhogs awake from their long winter naps to climb out of their burrows for a weather check. If the day is bright and clear, they will, of course, see their shadows and (knowing that old Scottish Couplet) go back to sleep through that second winter.

In an English version of this tradition, it is the hedgehog that does the weather prediction. However in the new world, groundhogs—small, brown rodents also known as woodchucks and whistle pigs—get the duty.

This may sound like a silly holiday to those in the Sun Belt, but after a tough winter, such frivolity can be a therapeutic distraction. And groundhogs are proving very useful in other ways, too.