Happy Groundhog Day
And Happy Birthday to Mama
What is Groundhog Day—a quirky tradition, a folklore festival, a favorite movie? Besides being all that, and my mother’s birthday, it represents for me a key spiritual principle. Of course, when I look into its history, it is fascinating to notice the static theme of anticipation, of hope for warmer, brighter days. In medieval times, Germanic peoples observed Candlemas on February 2nd.1 Candlemas familiarly hinged on whether a badger or a bear would see its shadow; if it did, then the superstitious would gear up for more freezing cold days. If no shadow was observed, they allowed themselves to consider spring just around the corner. German and Dutch immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania started the “Groundhog Day” tradition, and the movie Groundhog Day centers on the eponymous festival in Punxsutawney—a real place, as it turns out, in Jefferson County, PA, although locations in the movie are actually set in Woodstock, IL.2 The film, directed and written by the late Harold Ramis, conveys a plot in which weatherman Phil, played by Bill Murray, is anxious to get through what he anticipates to be a boring, typical day, but finds himself trapped in a paradox of time and space that won’t allow him to move forward. The film was well-received at the time of its release in 1993 and, in my humble opinion, it stands the test of time as an exhibit of what it means to be human and the struggle to lead a meaningful life. On the surface, we have a story that centers on a supposedly silly event. Phil himself dismisses the Groundhog Day tradition as a repetitive exercise based entirely on superstition rather than the science of meteorology that pays his bills. The day before Groundhog Day, Phil travels up to Punxsutawney in a van with producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and Larry the cameraman (Chris Elliot). We see Phil’s attraction to Rita in their first dialogue, although he is slightly dismayed by her optimistic attitude. She is ready to make the most of the time, even if she is on a work assignment, and just enjoys the novelty of the quaint town far removed from the hustle and bustle of Pittsburgh. Larry is just kind of a go-along guy who leaves himself open to Phil’s insensitive teasing. Phil is obviously intelligent, a competent weatherman, but he is not getting much enjoyment out of life. The job is too easy, the weather too predictable, his colleagues too…uninteresting, and frankly, he’s bored, and probably suffers from some kind of low-level depression. He’s in for a pleasant surprise, however, at the outset. Rita surprises him by having reserved a room for him, not at the usual inn near the town square, but at a bed and breakfast with a white picket fence in a residential street. If it’s not quite enough to exactly excite him, he at least looks forward to an increase of solitary space and isolation from the uncultivated locals who are so irksome to him. If he sounds like an asshole…well…that’s because he is, but I never find myself unsympathetic to him. It is a boring and repetitive assignment, after all, and as he says so despondently in the film, it’s cold out there—“It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.” And so the plot unfolds—day 1; day 2, same day; day 3, here we go again, and on and on. In the first round, there is just disbelief. What is going on? What is this? Why is this happening again? Am I really having this conversation, with this person, again…or am I dreaming? Disbelief, and confusion. He says to Rita, “Well, what if there isn’t a tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!” Before he goes to sleep, he breaks a pencil and puts the pieces on the nightstand beside the alarm clock. That will be his test. And when he wakes up again, at 6 AM, to Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” the first thing he does is look for the pencil. It’s there, but not broken. “Yesterday” never happened. “Today” is Today, Groundhog Day, to be lived all over again. He panics. He talks to Rita and Larry about it and they recommend him seeing a doctor. He gets a brain scan. Director Harold Ramis plays the doctor who tells him there’s nothing wrong with his brain, but if he’s really concerned, maybe he should talk to a psychiatrist. That’s not much help either.
In the next phase we see him in the pit of despair, having a beer in the town bowling alley and talking to the town losers. This is the well-screw-it phase. What is there to lose? If today doesn’t count, he might as well have some fun. He winds up in jail! But it’s ok…because when he wakes up, it’s Sonny & Cher “I Got You Babe” all over again.
Now he just gets cocky. He’s angry. He punches the annoying salesman, Ned. He throws caution to the wind. He eats whatever he wants. He manipulates the situation to his sexual advantage. He schemes toward financial gain, ill-gotten. It gets old, though. Eventually, he’s just as bored as he ever was. It turns out getting everything you want, when you get everything you want, is a bit of an anticlimax. The stuff you buy, the thrills you experience are all of fleeting satisfaction. They bring a “high” but then you come down. Many people live this way, stuck in a cycle of highs and lows, constantly seeking new heights, new thrills.
This kind of existence, living on adrenaline and chasing dopamine, could not satisfy Phil for long. He clung to the one thing that never expired, the one thing that kept growing in his heart—his attraction to Rita. He tried everything to make headway with her—all the moves he ever learned, all the tried and tired steps from time immemorial: bring her coffee, show interest, learn her favorite things. There is that very amusing scene when he uses his many turns in this bizarre time-space warp to impress her by ordering her favorite drink and pretending it was his favorite too—sweet vermouth, ice, and a lemon twist. Nothing gets him to the finish line. He keeps striking out because he’s still playing as if it’s a game. He hasn’t learned yet to live in the moment—not to plan it out, not to memorize it and redo it perfectly later, but to live it, right then and there, honestly and from the heart, to see it and hear it and taste it always as something new. After many strikes with Rita, he loses hope of ever finding anything to live for. He plummets into a deep depression. He spends the day in pajamas, eating junk food, watching the same shows everyday, and becoming despondent over the sameness of everything. There is nothing new to yearn, no woman to conquer, no adventure left to try. Depression leads quickly to cynicism and bitterness. That’s when, at 6 AM, as Sonny & Cher sing “I Got You Babe,” he smashes the alarm clock with his fist. Not again, not another day! He tries dying, but suicide doesn’t work when you’re stuck in a time loop. You just wake up again at 6 AM to Sonny & Cher singing “I Got You Babe.”
OK, what gives? He can’t die. He never gets to February 3rd. He’s just stuck here, on February 2nd, in this repeating cycle of moments—moments that change only according to how he approaches them. Is he a god? No, he’s not a god. If he was a god, surely he’d be able to save that homeless old man who died on February 2nd—for Phil, that means the man keeps dying over and over again, no matter what Phil does. Phil can’t die, but somehow this man keeps dying. It was just his time, the nurse tells Phil exasperatedly. I think that’s when the dawn begins to break in Phil’s head. He begins behaving differently, and the world responds differently. As he embraces each moment, the community around him opens up. Everybody in Punxsutawney knows his name. He’s Phil, that nice man with the car jack. He’s Phil, that nice man who knew the heimlich maneuver. He’s Phil, the shockingly good pianist after only “one day” (the day repeated on an infinite loop) of practice. He even takes up ice sculpting. Rita can’t help but notice this new and improved Phil. He is no longer trying to impress her, yet impressing all the more with his sincerity and earnestness. Finally, when February 3rd comes, and it’s not just him and the same damn song on the alarm clock, she inquires, “Is this a good thing?” And he replies, “Anything different is good.”
I think that’s the secret to living well: learning to see everything differently. Be like Robin Williams when he steps on the desk in Dead Poets Society, showing the boys how to look at the world from a new vantage point, or when he tells them, your poem can be simple, just don’t let it be ordinary.
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See the Library of Congress blog for a wonderful, detailed history of Groundhog Day: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2022/02/groundhog-day-ancient-origins-of-a-modern-celebration/
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/how-woodstock-illinois-became-real-life-home-groundhog-day