Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 2 xkcd comics, and only 0 (0%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| 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. |
Explanation
This comic was posted on Groundhog Day, February 2nd. Cueball is shown explaining the holiday to Black Hat.
Groundhog Day originates from a superstition regarding the behavior of a groundhog, a type of rodent. Supposedly, if the groundhog does not see its shadow, the spring thaw is likely to happen shortly thereafter. If it does see its shadow, however, it is frightened and retreats into its burrow, and six more weeks of winter await.
Groundhog Day is also the title of a 1993 film starring Bill Murray. In the film, Murray's character is trapped in a time loop centered on Groundhog Day; no matter how his day ends - whether by falling asleep at the end of the day or dying somewhere during the event - the world and everyone around him resets to that same morning. However, Murray's character retains all memories of the previous day. The movie has become synonymous with the plot element of a time loop in English-speaking cultures.
The title text refers to the process of standardizing measurement units, which typically involves forming a consensus among many people from a wide range of places. Basing a weather prediction on rodents (such as groundhogs) and mustelids (weasels) is ridiculous to start with, and basing it on a single individual (named Punxsutawney Phil) is even more so.
Transcript
- Cueball: Historically, it refers to a ceremony to predict the weather using a rodent. But nowadays people often use it to mean "a time loop experienced by one person."
- Black Hat: ...what.
- [Caption below the panel:]
- Easily our weirdest holiday.
Is this out of date? .
New here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes, memes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wikis like this, take a look at these help pages describing how to navigate the wiki, and how to edit pages.
- Discussion about various parts of the wiki is going on at Explain XKCD:Community portal. Share your 2¢!
- List of all comics contains a table of most recent xkcd comics and links to the rest, and the corresponding explanations. There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
- If you see that a new comic hasn't been explained yet, you can create it: Here's how.
- We sell advertising space to pay for our server costs. To learn more, go here.
Rules
Don't be a jerk. There are a lot of comics that don't have set in stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to —and helping everyone better understand— xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
