An Unusual Holiday Means An Unsual History

This belief was brought in America during the 18th Century by the German settlers, who adopted the groundhog as their weather predictor.

Groundhog Day then came into being in North America during the late 1800s. Thanks to the combined effort of Clymer H. Freas, a newspaper editor, and W. Smith, an American Congressman and newspaper publisher.

They organized and popularized a yearly festival in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, which was populated by a lot of German settlers. The festival featured a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil which used to foretell how long the winter would last.

Aside from Punxsutawney Phil, there have been a lot of other weather forecasters in North America. There’s Staten Island Chuck in New York City, New York, General Beauregard Lee in Atlanta, Georgia and also the famous Wiarton Willie in Wiarton, Ontario.

But the holiday wasn’t witnessed by a lot of people throughout generations and generations. The 1993 movie, Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray was a major reason to why so many people attend the event nowadays.

The reason the movie had such a major impact is because of the comedic storyline and how it was also taken place in Punxsutawaney, Pennsylvania. Since then, thousands of people have gathered around their hometown weather forecasters to see how the winter season would play out.

Now there has been some controversy about the holiday itself. When you really think about, six more weeks of winter and six more weeks until spring have exactly the same meaning.

This surprising fact is why some people in today’s society don’t really care about the unique holiday. But it doesn’t matter if you like the holiday or not. What does count is how long this tradition has gone on for.

If you look towards the future, you will see that the holiday will keep attracting more people as the years go on. Just look at college students, they’re actually having parties on February 2nd.

Word Count: 652