My Christmas wreath is still on the front door. It is February 2. I tied it with a black-and-white-striped ribbon so it doesn’t look so Christmassy. I took down the colored lights around the door on Epiphany, but left the white lights and the evergreen boughs.

I thought that I would take everything down today; it seemed like a fitting time to say goodbye to electric winter lights and start that bleak, unadorned period of waiting for spring. Between now and the daffodils, nothing - just a blank front door, empty steps, empty flower pots, in attendance for the first sign of thaw.

Today is Groundhog Day. It is my mother’s favorite holiday. 

Why would anyone’s favorite holiday be Groundhog Day? No special desserts, no presents, no parties except for a few guys in top hats in Pennsylvania showing off a rodent to the beat of polka music at 7 am. 

And it doesn’t even offer any magical certainty that spring is soon to arrive; Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, heralding six more weeks of winter; that puts us about at the Spring Equinox, so that’s true whichever way the wind blows. It is peculiar, and kind of fun, but enough to be a favorite? Why, mom?

“To me, it was the beginning of spring,” she says.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

The crocuses are still a long way off on Long Island, but that’s enough of a reason, I guess. I don’t know why I always expect some long, involved, idiosyncratic tale when I ask for explanations of family stories. I think I should start framing some strange, winding backstory for my love of Thanksgiving now, in case anyone ever asks. 

Groundhog Day itself has a strange, winding backstory: a series of replacements for earlier holidays all looking for the light at the end of winter. Here in North America, it centers on the Pennsylvania Dutch belief that a rodent in the sun is a harbinger of spring. That in turn derives from an earlier German superstition about a badger, which was feted on Candlemas: the Christian holiday that marks the Presentation of Christ at the Temple of Jerusalem. 

On Candlemas, all household candles should be lit to celebrate Christ, the Light of the World. Any mangers and Christmas decorations should be put away if you haven’t gotten around to it all ready. In France, on La Chandeleur, crepes are eaten. So that’s a special dessert.

In Italy, on Candelora, there is, like in many places, a little traditional weather forecasting on the day. In Padua, for example:

Se ghe xè sołe a Candelora, del inverno semo fòra; se piove e tira vento, del inverno semo drento (Vèneto)

Se il giorno della Candelora è soleggiato, siamo fuori dell’inverno, se piove e tira vento, siamo dentro l’inverno (Italian)

If on the day of Candelora it is sunny, we are out of winter; if it rains and is windy, we are in it. I can’t really argue with that.

Candlemas marks forty days from the birth of Christ (aka Christmas). Forty days also marked, in the Bible, and probably before, the (re)purification of a woman after childbirth. Before the forty days were up, she had to bear all the dirt of the world, I suppose.

The month of February has long been given to purification, female and otherwise. In Ancient Rome, the calends, or beginning, of the month belonged to Juno, queen of the gods and patron of Rome. Her epithet that day, at the beginning of the month of Februarius, was Februa - for purification, purging, and for her role in childbirth. Februa also evokes Februus, the god of fever, which is a purging process of its own; Februus, says Ovid, was also worshipped by the Etruscans before. 

One more layer: Imbolc, which stretches back to neolithic Ireland. It too marks the coming of spring, and the ritualistic cleaning and purging that comes along with it. On this day, people wait for a visit from St. Brigid, and look to badgers, or even snakes, to divine the coming of spring.  Imbolc celebrates family hearths, which are bright and warm no matter the season. 

Maybe my mother hasn’t done the deep Wiki dive I have to list all these holidays, because she has other things she needs to do. But I think she knows somehow that the light is coming, and the hearth of the home is eternal, and that is why she likes that groundhog. The spring cleaning is appealing too.

So because of her, I am not ready to take the evergreen and twinkly lights off the front door. They might stay until the crocuses come, the house is clean, and the snow gives way to fresh grass. For now, winter is still here, and I am still waiting for a sign of spring that I can believe in.