Update: Groundhog Day Events Cancelled In South Whitehall
Even the groundhog won't show up
With an eye on the icy weather predicted for Wednesday morning, Yahdee the Groundhog has canceled Groundhog Day events in South Whitehall Township.
“We don’t want anyone to fall and get hurt,” said David Adam, Haaptmann of Grundsau Lodge No. 16, which has organized an early morning program featuring the weather-predicting rodent on Feb. 2, Groundhog Day, for the past five years.
Adams said Yahdee contacted him Tuesday afternoon by cell phone. “He said we should stay home. Even he isn’t going to show his face.”
Had the weather cooperated, Yahdee would have arrived by sled on the frozen Jordan Creek at Covered Bridge Park on Wehr Mill Road early Wednesday morning. There, after a short ceremony, he would have pronounced whether we might expect a long hard ending to winter or an early spring.
Instead, Yahdee made a premature prediction on Tuesday: “It’s going to be an early spring, because winter started early,” Adam said the groundhog told him.
Yahdee is named for “Jahden,” the Pennsylvania Dutch name for the Jordan Creek.
According to traditions brought to America by German, a.k.a. Pennsylvania Dutch, immigrants, if the groundhog sees his shadow on Feb. 2, he will be frightened and run back into his burrow, and we will have six more weeks of winter.
The midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, Feb. 2 holds various meanings in different cultures and religions.
The big Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney in western Pennsylvania will take place as planned, in spite of the massive snow and ice storm stretching from the Midwest to New England.
Punxsutawney Phil may be a live groundhog (Yahdee has seen the inside of a taxidermist’s shop), but organizers of the South Whitehall event say their annual Groundhog Day event is more authentic. The program includes songs, the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer, all in Pennsylvania Dutch.
Grundsau Lodge No. 16 is one of more than a dozen in the area formed to preserve the language and traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Preparations for next year’s Groundhog Day event are already under way.
