So did the groundhog see his shadow this morning? This is the day Punxsutawney Phil emerges from his hole (or, to be accurate is forcibly dragged from his zoo enclosure by weirdly dressed handlers) and if he's frightened by seeing his shadow winter will continue. Or so they say. Well, with all the television lights how couldn't he see his shadow?

I haven't bothered to check the groundhog's forecast yet. Groundhog Day reminds me of an election. There's pomp and ceremony, news coverage, anticipation, and sometimes the groundhog says one thing and sometimes he says something else but you know that when it's all over there's going to be six more weeks of winter just like always.

Still, you've got to take your top hat off to a holiday built around a rodent sticking its head out of a frozen hole in the ground and then going back in.

Groundhog Day might well be my favorite holiday. We're not pressured to run up credit card bills, let alone made to feel guilty about forgetting to send folks celebratory cards. ("Here's wishing you a cloudy February 2nd!") No sappy music pollutes the stores. We don't have to decorate. Who would string lights around a hole? I suppose you could put fireworks down one but that wouldn't be very nice.

We always have a resident groundhog. Over the years the groundhog, and its home, have changed. For a time one of the entrances was under the sunporch, then it moved to different places in the front yard and along the edge of the backyard. We've observed our groundhog waddling around like an overinflated football in the autumn and drooping along in the early spring looking like it was a younger, smaller sibling wearing a hand-me-down skin. But never have we seen the groundhog pop out on February second.

Or maybe he does and is frightened by his shadow so quickly he's back in the warm burrow before we notice. Like I said, we always get six more weeks of winter.