The fine people of Haddon Township have decided to have an all-day Groundhog Day festival this year to help predict how soon spring will arrive.
The event includes a beer garden, bands, fire pits and a heated tent in an outdoor square on Haddon Avenue in the Westmont section of town.
They’re just missing one thing -- the groundhog.
Now, the fact that they don’t yet have a real groundhog hasn’t slowed the march toward the Feb. 1 event. A human mascot in a groundhog costume, Haddon Harry, will be on hand, as will a stuffed-animal groundhog. The plan is for the crowd to vote on if it does or doesn’t see the stuffed animal’s shadow.
The lore of the tradition is if the giant rodent sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. And of course if it doesn’t, there will be an early spring.
“We’re going to do a costume and trivia contest and be on Instagram all day,” said Kate Burns, the township official planning the event. “We were looking for a goofy, crazy event that nobody else does.”
And if that’s not enough fun for the average family or bar crawler, the festival will also riff on the 1993 Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, in which a curmudgeon TV weatherman is caught in a hellish time loop which repeats Groundhog Day until he transforms himself into a better person.
“We thought it would be fun to mimic the movie and have a ceremony,” Burns said. “It will be kitschy and fun. We’re going to have people playing the roles including Bill Murray’s. We’ll also be showing the movie.”
Burns said township officials were so keen on the idea they didn’t want to be held back by not, you know, actually having a groundhog.
“We looked into it but it’s really hard to get a groundhog,” Burns said. “And what would we do with it afterward?”
The Haddon Township Groundhog Day event will be on Feb. 1
Groundhog Day has been widely celebrated in the U.S. since 1887. The ritual has been linked to pagan and Christian traditions in Germanic and Celtic cultures. German immigrants to Pennsylvania carried on the tradition. In the early 1960s, Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who took his name from the central Pennsylvania town, catapulted the lore into modern recognition.
On Feb. 2 each year, townspeople, some dressed in top hats and tuxedos, pull Phil out of his burrow just outside of town.
The Groundhog Day film inspired the Haddon Township event on Saturday, Feb. 1 -- the day before the Super Bowl.
“People love the square and to get out and we were looking for something during the winter months when people are cooped up,” Burns said. “And we looked at the calendar and saw Groundhog’s Day.”
The festival runs from noon to 10 p.m.
Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.
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Town couldn’t get a real groundhog. So, it’s looking for a stuffed animal’s shadow. - NJ.com
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