“It’s like a big block party energy, really,” said Kaitie Burger, executive director of the Pennsylvania Tourism Office.
On the day before sunrise on each Feb. 2, a hilltop in western Pennsylvania is filled with strangers, who, at least for a few hours, act like neighbours. It is also a part of the routine at Gobbler Knob in Punxsutawney: huddled masses, music blasting through the darkness and a general silence as a groundhog called Phil is taken out to make a judgment which no one really believes is anything but symbolic. The point is not the forecast. The point is the gathering.
Groundhog Day is conspicuously handmade in a country that is overwhelmed with scheduled fun and refined experiences. Burger has explained how the town “truly comes” to life and how it is brought to life by people who come to it not just across “all 50 states all across the world” because it is like a bucket-list experience that still is part of a place and not a brand. In one way or another, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club has been conducting its annual ceremony over a period of approximately 140 years and the attraction is linked to that longevity: the same rituals, the same amusing divide between “Team Winter” and “Team Spring,” and the same small slice of group anxiety that is hard to capture on camera.
That is less of a mystery than muscle to make it working. The Inner Circle of the club, tuxedos, top hats, and bearing a seriousness which is accomplished with a wink, take the tradition as a civic obligation. According to Thomas Dunkel, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, “membership turnover is very slow because it’s a lifetime appointment.” Candidates are selected on what they can assist the town in working on. I want to have a school teacher in the Inner Circle all the time, Dunkel said. “We always have an attorney. We always have a doctor.” And unpaid: You must find somebody who will give you that time, he said.
Such a volunteer backup is significant since Groundhog Day is far more than a one-morning show. The nurturance is all year round and this includes the home base of Phil at Gobbler Knob where the club has a visitor and educative habitat. Dunkel has highlighted the sweat at the back of the pageantry: “The most important responsibility we have is the care of Punxsutawney Phil.” Even the folklore is kept straight-faced, with the club going all “groundhog-ese” to the summer picnic where Phil is reportedly drinking an elixir to live forever- rituals which make the look of an animal a play at the city hall.
The forecasting, however, belongs to another category: a custom, which calls on argument without belief. The ritual still depends on the old dichotomy of shadow or no shadow, which is based on European folklore of the relationship between Feb. 2 and seasonal transitions, a tradition usually extended to Candlemas practices and immigrant folktales. Contemporary measurement has never been the attraction and the figures emphasize that. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Analysis analysis has determined that Phil has been correct only 35 percent of the time in long-run comparisons with his predictions, although the tradition has remained widely known as more accurate animal forecasters.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to overlook what the crowd is in fact practicing: patience, attention and the uncommon sense of being part of a process that is impossible to swipe. Burger has suggested that one of the ways Groundhog Day is a “forces you to kind of like slow down and enjoy it in the moment,”
In the case of nontravellers, the invitation is purposely broad. The ceremony is broadcasted on VisitPA.com, yet the essence of the event is quite tangible: the cold air, the noise, the waiting, and the relief of laughing with those who came to perform the same basic task the ritual that has not disappeared.
