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.
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.