It's Groundhog Day!

"Ok, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties, 'cause it's cooold out there today! - It's cold out there every day..." That's what Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, hears first thing in the morning in the movie Groundhog Day. The film was released in 1993 and quickly became THE classic flick to watch on February 2nd.

Groundhog Day, of course, is real: it's the day the "prognosticator of prognosticators", the groundhog, tells us how much more winter we're saddled with. If the groundhog sees his shadow and retreats into his burrow, we can expect six more weeks of freezing cold. As I hear, Punxsutawny Phil did indeed see his shadow this year. Don't put away those hats and gloves yet!

Punxsutawny, by the way, is a real place in Pennsylvania. Funnily enough, I know someone who grew up there. It doesn't look anything like the movie version, though. Especially charming Gobbler's Knob is, in real life, rather unspectacular.

Phil is real, too. During the year, the groundhog lives in the Punxsutawny library, or at least he used to.

Groundhog Day is, however, also known by less mundane names and in a religious content. The Catholic church celebrates Candlemas or Lichtmess on this day. Forty days after Mary gave birth to Jesus, she presented him at the temple and was purified, therefore this day is also known as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. Some interesting lore about Candlemas can be found here.

But as with so many Christianized holidays, this one, too, started out as a Pagan festival. My Gaelic is not so up to snuff, so I can't vouch for the popular translations of Oimelc and Imbolc. The first denotes the time of being "in milk", meaning the ewes who are now bearing lambs. The latter, meaning "in the belly", points us towards the fact that deep inside the Earth, things are indeed beginning to stir after a long sleep. If December 1st is the first real day of winter, this is the halfway point on the way to spring. From this springs the lovely tradition of the festivals of light, of which nearly every culture has one. Now is the time to coax the sun back up into the heavens. In my house, I do this with a very simple, brief ritual: for a few minutes after I get up, I turn on all the lights in house (yes, even now that my electricity bill has gone up). While all around, it is still dark and quiet, it is an incredibly uplifting and joyful experience to be so bathed in light. And to me, it is also a harbinger of better times to come.

Absolut privat ?!

Das Nürnberger Museum für Kommunikation beherbergt noch bis 15. Februar die Wechselausstellung "Absolut privat?! - Vom Tagebuch zum Weblog".
Ich selbst habe sie am vergangenen Wochenende besucht und kann sie empfehlen. Neben verschiedenen Blogs werden vor allem die verschiedenen Arten des Tagebuchführens an teilweise sehr umfangreichen, vor allem aber interessanten Beispielen dargestellt. Die Ausstellung regt Interessierte (und natürlich Blogger ) dazu an, über eigene Gewohnheiten nachzudenken. Sind nicht unsere verschiedensten Angewohnheiten des Alltags in vielerlei Hinsicht ein Tagebuch?

http://www.museumsstiftung.de/nuernberg/d441_ausstellungen.asp