The Groundhog tradition—now, more than ever.

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The furry bastard we worship. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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The University of Dallas officially states that their Groundhog celebration began when President Donald Cowan told a group of students in 1962 to “think of something to celebrate — celebrate Groundhog Day, for instance — but whatever you do, do it with style.”

According to unofficial oral tradition, however, his words were somewhere along the lines of:

“Dear God, not this again. You want to celebrate something? How about… a groundhog? You ever worshiped a groundhog? Those furry bastards! Worshipping a groundhog… just think of that. Now get out of my kitchen before I call the police.”

Whether President Cowan was speaking in slight jest or blinding, criminal rage, his words were taken literally and Groundhog has been a UD tradition ever since.

Battles over its legitimacy raged in the pages of the old University News, where some, like an unnamed student in the February 5, 1992 issue, said it “isn’t worth the money,” while others, like current English professor Dr. Kevin Saylor in the same issue, called it “a good thing.”

These contemporary philosophers are mere examples of the greater debate at hand. For some, Groundhog was out of touch with our scholarly mission, a bad excuse to skip classes and do keg stands every year. For others, it was a victory of student ingenuity, and those against it were just mad because they couldn’t do a keg stand.

In 1990, the scholars won: the administration stopped sponsoring Groundhog, and President Bob Sasseen threatened to go after student events as well — until 400 students gathered on the Mall that Groundhog morning to march a funerary casket to the old Texas Stadium woods.

This is all the past though. The administration officially rebooted the event in 2001, and now it is our greatest non-weird-book birthright. You might voraciously celebrate Groundhog, or you might want to picket with warnings of hellfire and the 144,000, but you can’t deny that it’s extremely amusing. Sixty-one years ago, there was a party in the woods, and now we’re asking for the intercession of Santa Marmotta.

How we can celebrate, though, depends on multiple factors. Most important is the longstanding relationship between the groundhog and the keg. Groundhog week is equally the most anticipated and feared event on the UD drinking calendar, as students gather in dark, freezing fields to drink various liquors which alliterate with the day of the week.

Few deny that Mixer Monday, Tsipouro Thursday and the like are great opportunities to meet the wider student community, but their appeal diminishes when you have a 10 a.m. with Dr. Burns the next day. As with all drinking, anyone who goes to these events should exercise discretion and get, at best, only slightly off their rocker.

Moreover, there is the recent problem with bad weather at Groundhog. It seems like you can now predict the next major storm in Dallas by checking your calendar either for Ted Cruz’s forthcoming vacation or Groundhog week. It was fun at first, but after a few near-bouts with crippling hypothermia, you might wish for some blades of grass in Groundhog Park every now and then.

This yearly deluge cannot be coincidental. If the weather is random, it should hit us randomly. If our God is merciful, it might come the week after Groundhog, so we may recover from our hangovers in peace. No, it’s always the same week, always striking fear into the hearts of freshmen who only own white Air Force 1’s. The trend is clear, and every trend has a cause.

You guessed it: cultural Marxism is here. Everyone knows that the Bolsheviks have infiltrated our schools, media and water supplies to distort history and produce race-swapped Disney reboots. Furthermore, according to freedomriderreport.kz, a globalist cabal has successfully built weather control stations around America to subjugate its enemies and push the “climate change” myth.

These stations now target us because of our faith and Core, and also because we celebrate Punxsutawney Phil, the only other being capable of controlling the weather. As long as we hold dear to these, we stab at the hands of the Reds, thus becoming their enemies.

As we prepare our steins and boots for the biggest party of the year, we must celebrate knowing that we defend not only our Tower, but all of Western civilization. We must shout our Thomistic metaphysics and “Mr. Brightside” lyrics to everyone we meet, whether they ask or not, because the sheep know not the wolves at the door.

We must sharpen our minds, we must be joyous in our souls and we must falsify our taxes. UD students, both boozers and long skirts, must unite this week, and live like our lives depend on it. Happy Groundhog!

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