Groundhog Day is an offshoot of the Christian celebration of Candlemas, which was held every February 2—exactly 40 days after Christmas.
In parts of Europe, it was believed that a sunny Candlemas meant another 40 days of winter were on the horizon.
In Germanic Europe, Candlemas was denoted as dachstag, or "Badger Day," which utilized badgers to help with the weather predictions.
According to tradition, if the animal saw its shadow on that day, people were in for four more weeks of winter.
Even earlier celebrants used bears to predict the weather, but as their numbers thinned, badgers became the go-to meteorologists (though foxes also worked in a pinch).
The Pennsylvania Dutch ported the tradition to the United States and replaced the badgers (which were mainly found in the central U.S.) with the much more common groundhog.
THE FIRST MODERN GROUNDHOG DAY EVENT WAS HELD IN 1887.
The earliest mention of a day concerning groundhogs in the United States dates back to 1840 in the diary of Pennsylvanian James L. Morris, but the first known instance of people gathering together to celebrate came in 1887 when a groundhog club traveled together to Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney to bring Punxsutawney Phil out to check for his shadow.
The Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper had reported on the groundhog not seeing his shadow the year before (though no event was held), and its city editor Clymer Freas is credited with inventing the day as we still celebrate it.
