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submitted 1 week ago by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

xkcd #3202: Groundhog Day Meaning

Title text:

Originally, the ceremony used a variety of rodents and mustelids, but over time most people agreed it made sense to standardize on a specific individual ground squirrel in Pennsylvania.

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3202/

explainxkcd for #3202

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[-] nesc@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Weirdest? Please, take a look at any religious holiday. Let's take Easter, we celebrate resurrection of man-god who allowed himself to be killed so he could save us, and immediately after resurrection he transformed into god-god and moved to the sky. So anyway we make dyed eggs to celebrate it.

[-] chaogomu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

celebrate resurrection of man-god who allowed himself to be killed so he could save us, and immediately after resurrection he transformed into god-god and moved to the sky.

Man-god allowed himself to be killed to save us from the wrath of god-god. A being who was mad that the creatures he created weren't spending all day every day worshiping him exactly as he said to, after giving them the free will to do otherwise.

the eggs thing predates christianity, so these things weren't all invented at once. people just kept on adding more and more outrageous shit

[-] marcos@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's not every day that we get to see Black Hat lost.

[-] ksigley@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

There really is an xkcd for everything.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

You gotta have some standards. If you use a different rodent every year, you can’t realistically compare the results with one another. Who knows how wildly the measurement error varies from species to species?

[-] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I mean, the one thing the comic gets wrong is that we never really settled on a standard, there are like 36 different regional rodents that are used., my favourite being Wiarton Willie:

The story of Wiarton Willie dates back to 1956. A Wiarton resident named Mac McKenzie wanted to showcase his childhood home to his many friends, so he sent out invitations for a "Groundhog Day" gathering. One of these invitations fell into the hands of a Toronto Star reporter. The reporter travelled to Wiarton looking for the Groundhog Day event. None of the townspeople knew about a festival, but one suggested he check at the Arlington Hotel, the local watering hole. There the reporter found McKenzie and his friends partying and was invited to join them. The next day, the reporter lamented to McKenzie that he needed some kind of story to take back to justify his expenses. So McKenzie grabbed his wife's fur hat, which had a large button on the front, went out to the parking lot, dug a burrow in the snow and pronounced a prognostication (which no one remembers). The picture of Mac and the hat ran in the February 3, 1956 edition of the Toronto Star. A year later, about 50 people arrived for the festival.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Americans will use any unit besides the metric system /s

[-] e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

what is Walter White doing in this cartoon?

[-] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 week ago

It's a good holiday because it has the responsibility to not have a facade. What even is Christmas? A solstace celebration? A celebration of the natural forest? The birthday of someone who was probably born early fall? An excuse to give children gifts? Idk anymore man.

[-] Manjushri@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

If we count years from the birth of Christ, shouldn't his birthday be January first?

[-] chaogomu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Shepherds only really stay out in their fields during calving season, i.e. And in Israel, that's mid-December to mid-January.

But really, anything actually written about Jesus before the age of like 30, is likely completely made up during the Council of Nicaea in 325AD.

Before that, the Trinity wasn't fully mainstream, because Jesus was considered a created being and not god himself. At least by a large percentage of early Christians.

this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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