You probably know this, but it’s what remains of the Celtic festival of Imbolc. It’s the first of the three spring festivals. Ostara you definitely know since it was coopted by the church along with the eggs and rabbit symbology.
Wikipedia gets strange in some articles, and this is definitely one of them. St Brigid is a Catholic thing, not a wheel of the year feast. Why the conflation here? I don’t know.
There are a number of articles that talk about the “awakening” aspect of Imbolc, and it is associated with other hibernating animals peeking out of their dens to see what’s up. So the groundhog in the American context is a natural one.
You probably know this, but it’s what remains of the Celtic festival of Imbolc. It’s the first of the three spring festivals. Ostara you definitely know since it was coopted by the church along with the eggs and rabbit symbology.
This claim is marked “citation needed” on Wikipedia :)
You can add my post 😀.
Wikipedia gets strange in some articles, and this is definitely one of them. St Brigid is a Catholic thing, not a wheel of the year feast. Why the conflation here? I don’t know.
There are a number of articles that talk about the “awakening” aspect of Imbolc, and it is associated with other hibernating animals peeking out of their dens to see what’s up. So the groundhog in the American context is a natural one.