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Andrew The Scribbler's avatar

I find your title "Worlding Into the Earth" an appropriate one for Groundhog Day as well. While the Bill Murray movie connected the holiday to endlessly repeating days, Groundhog Day has a much deeper meaning. I find it a unique tradition that compliments Imbolc, but is still distinctly its own thing.

Once Deitsch (Pennsylvania Dutch) people arrived in North America, the Groundhog replaced the Badger as the prognosticator of the weather (something very important to agricultural people). In parts of Germany Candlemas was known as Badger Day. While they were Christian at the time, various pagan ideas and symbols still survived in the folk culture, even if their original source was forgotten. The scholar Don Yoder once called the groundhog a totemic animal for Deitsch. Groundhogs were considered messengers, as the borrow was seen as a metaphor for various connections between the worlds.

So, Happy Imbolc and Happy Groundhog's Day!

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Chay's avatar

Happy Imbolc!

About the song: There is a new, "sanitized" version, which says "let the young folk live, and the old beside them", but I remember that as a kid, we would always sing the old version. (I am from Luxembourg)

It only occured to me recently that it is actually meant in a different way: "Let the old folk die" - the emphasis is on the "let", as in allowing them to die a peaceful death. A good death, as opposed to spending the last part of life suffering.

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