Today was Groundhog Day here in North America. I have always been a little skeptical of this tradition, even when I was a child. Who decided the groundhog was a good weather forecaster? Well, according to a little research I did on the ever-trusty Wikipedia, those wacky Germans who settled in Pennsylvania came up with the groundhog plan.

The roots of the custom can be traced all the way back to Pagan festivals but I suppose the Germans had to clean it up a bit for the Christians and so they renamed the Pagan holiday orignally called Imbolc and made it Candlemas in the old country. Upon settling here in the new world, they cleaned it up even more by calling it Groundhog Day.

For all you lurkers and others out there, the groundhog in the mecca of Punxsutawney (yep, I had to look up how to spell that one!), Pennsylvania saw his shadow this morning and now we will have six more weeks of winter. My mother has a groundhog living under an old log cabin on her property in northern Mississippi but he did not emerge from his burrow this morning and give her the weather forecast.

My takeaway from all this: It is February 2. Chances are extremely high that we will have more winter weather. We don't need a groundhog to tell us that. Although it is probably a fun tradition in parts of the country and gives people a perfectly valid excuse to throw a party.