Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes.
Yesterday was Groundhog Day 2025. Perhaps you missed it (Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow AKA six more weeks of winter.)
It came and went with the usual lack of fanfare.
And I have a serious problem with it.
I've always loved holidays. Ask my grandma and she'll tell you how I would get so excited in anticipation for a holiday that by the day itself I'd be sick. I remember how exciting every holiday felt when I was in elementary school. We never make so much of a big deal of minor holidays like in grade school. For many it was the last time they gave or received a Valentine’s card, which is tragic.
But temperamentally, I love me a good holiday, which is exactly why I have a real problem with Groundhog Day.
Interestingly enough, it is the love of a thing that causes one to dislike so much about it. You're most likely to be killed by your spouse rather than anyone else. When you love a sports team, you hate far more teams than the person who really just doesn’t care about the game. You probably also hate your team more often than not for their mistakes, blunders, failures, etc. You love them so much they drive you crazy.
It seems when one loves something one wants the best of it rather than enjoying it in any possible form. One would think if one loved, say, pizza, it wouldn't matter if it's from Italy or the freezer, one would like it just the same, but the one who loves pizza probably disdains the frozen pizza far more than your average pizza enjoy-er.
So it's with this critical eye that I approach one thing that I love greatly: holidays, but more specifically, a tragically under-celebrated day.
My main gripe with Groundhogs day? There's not more of it. More what? Good question. More... of it. Of celebration. Of holiday-ness. Why isn't it a bigger deal?
Easy: it's a day about a large rodent inaccurately predicting weather.
But anything can be reduced to meaninglessness if we define it in the least interesting, most deconstructive way: this essay is just squiggles on a light screen; love is just chemicals in brain-meat; and pizza is just a mangled up, sliced up mash of things we pulled from the ground.
This is a fundamentally wrong way of defining any experience in the world as it reduces something to simply the parts that its made of without giving any credit to what it means, why it exists, how much it’s enjoyed, etc. You know, all of the things that make being alive and experiencing things worthwhile.
Groundhogs day is a holiday which is a day that is supposed to be different from others. It may not be huge like Christmas, but it's got its own quirks. My problem is that it doesn't have more quirks.
My top three problems with Groundhog’s Day
1. It's constructed wrong
Groundhog’s Day doesn't lend itself well to celebration. The entire way it's set-up flies in the face of having a special day.
At most it's a topic of water-cooler discussion because you heard it on the radio when driving into work. Everything unique about it is over and done before most of us go to work.
There's no anticipation, no celebration.
What can you do to celebrate? You can't have a party that begins at four in the morning where everyone predicts what the groundhog will say; Live-stream the event and cheer or groan when the prognosticator of prognosticators gives his prophecy.
2. It's a fixed day on the calendar
It doesn't take a day off of work, so you can't celebrate anything if it's on a weekday, since it doesn't have a changing date, like Thanksgiving. The first Saturday of February would be a fine Groundhog’s day.
And completely forget about moving the celebration to the closest weekend. If Halloween or the Fourth of July falls on a Monday or Thursday, you can bet celebrations will be held the weekend prior or after.
Celebrating Groundhog’s day the weekend prior is insane: you won't resolve the big winter question until February 2 rolls around. Likewise, celebrating after the fact is also nuts, because where's the anticipation? There’s a New Year's Eve quality to the day, where one must wait for something to definitively happen at a specific time, only it's more like the new year began at 7:15 AM on January 1 and you were informed of it as the second story on your daily email newsletter.
3. How would you even celebrate it in the first place?
Admittedly, this is my weakest problem with Groundhog’s day because necessity is the mother of invention. If we start celebrating it, we'll start making celebrations. It’s redundantly obvious.
Off the top of my head, we move the day to a first-Saturday situation and we ask the Groundhog for his weather-report in the afternoon, so anticipation can rise throughout the day.
Secondly, we institute a whole legion of local Oracles: there’s a groundhog in Pennsylvania, but in my hometown we could all go to the downtown for the mayor to consult a beaver, or the zoo to ask a bear. Different cities around the world drop different things for New Year’s Eve, why can't Groundhogs day feature a local gathering, followed by a communal festival with food, performances, games, 5k runs, a parade, and more?
Another gripe with holidays: you’re usually stuck with your family. Nothing wrong with that, but I like a 5k on Thanksgiving because you can celebrate with the broader community for a little bit. Groundhog’s Day could really capitalize on filling this niche.
A local festival, a brunch/lunch, games and prizes. It's easy. The University of Dallas has the right idea with their week-long celebration.
Lastly, have a normal party to celebrate the occasion. Everyone dress in light or dark colors: are you team shadow or not? We’ll find out at 4:30 PM.
Maybe you don’t really care about holidays (or actively dislike them. You might be thinking, John isn't this a stupid thing to want to celebrate?
Yes.
But also, do we really need more reasons not to celebrate? Should our time really be spent in looking down on occasions for gathering with loved ones, enjoying traditions and celebrations, and turning up our noses in superiority at most opportunities for whimsy?
It's pride that stops us from enjoyment: perhaps it's not such a bad thing to simply be grateful for our Groundhog without looking it in the mouth, to decimate a metaphor.
But who knows? Maybe you just love fun more than I do, and therefore only demand the very best from it.