For some, Groundhog Day is an overlooked holiday. For five students from Simpson Residence, it’s a holiday worth traveling more than five hours to celebrate.
The idea started between a group of friends while watching football and casually discussing plans for the weekend.
Sophomore Jonathan Williams, a resident assistant in Simpson, said the idea to travel to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, for its Groundhog Day celebration was a joke at first but quickly became a reality.
“A friend asked me if there was anything going on Feb. 2, and I joked about Groundhog Day being a serious day,” Williams said. “Then one thing led to another, and I asked if anyone wanted to go to celebrate it and pretty soon we were checking our schedules.”
Junior Samuel Blunt overheard the growing conversation but decided to do his own research before joining.
“I wasn’t sold immediately and decided to look up the lore around Groundhog Day,” Blunt said. “And then it was the idea of the pilgrimage that ended up convincing me.”
After planning the trip, Williams, Blunt, and freshmen Nate Gallagher, Joseph VanKat, and Alex Buehrer hit the road Thursday night for Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney where the celebration is held.
Groundhog Day, held every year on Feb. 2, is a longstanding evolution of Candlemas, originally a Celtic festival celebrating midwinter. The tradition evolved when Germany introduced the hedgehog into the lore. If the hedgehog saw its shadow, it meant there would be six more weeks of winter. Once the tradition was brought to the United States, groundhogs replaced hedgehogs as the harbingers of the year’s weather.
Since the late 1800s, the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, has predicted the weather for the rest of the winter. According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, Punxsutawney Phil has been predicting the weather since 1886. His longevity is attributed to drinking the elixir of life, a potion that adds seven years to his life.
Prepared to witness this historic holiday in person, the students arrived at midnight and waited in a parking lot until the event started at 3 a.m. Buehrer said the city is devoted to the holiday.
“In the town, there are 43 statues of Punxsutawney Phil,” Buehrer said. “He was everywhere — figures of him as Statue of Liberty Phil, baseball Phil, or even a Wendy’s Phil, it was crazy.”
The group hiked the 1.3-mile trek to the top of Gobbler’s Knob.
“The whole thing was wild,” Blunt said. “You see sixty-year-old men dressed up as Elvis, a guy in a top hat reading a scroll, and thousands of people there excited to watch it.”
The groundhog makes his proclamation to the president of the Groundhog Club who, according to the club, is the only one capable of speaking ‘Groundhogese.’ This year, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, predicting an early spring.
Vice President of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Dan McGinley said the holiday is a day where ridiculous things can be taken seriously.
“Groundhog Day, you might not know it, but it’s about irreverence,” McGinley said. “It’s about taking not being serious too seriously.”
The five students returned Saturday afternoon and have since enjoyed retelling their stories from the trip. Buehrer said he hopes to attend the event again next year.
“I think there are definitely people who are skeptical of Phil’s ability and the power of Groundhog Day,” Buehrer said. “I just wish they could have come with us and experienced it themselves.”
Williams said the excursion was a fitting reflection of the values of Simpson.
“The community in Simpson is built around this silly, goofy, boyhood mindset which we have to be serious about because we think it makes us a better man,” Williams said. “And so this Groundhog Day trip was a perfect mirror of that.”
