Groundhog Day is the one day a year where thousands of North Americans wait around for a fat marmot to crawl out of its hole and (hopefully not) see its shadow. Punxsutawney Phil, the star of the show, is widely admired by the inhabitants of his home state, Pennsylvania, as well as hundreds of communities around the world. But how did this tradition of blindly trusting a buck-toothed mammal come to be? Besides… can we even trust him?

In truth, the infamous Phil is only correct around 40% of the time. According to this statistic, you can flip a coin yourself and be more accurate than the groundhog. So, why do we continue to relentlessly put our faith into a rodent that won’t actually help us? And why is this a holiday in the first place?

Historically, the tradition stems from the German day Candlemas, which was practiced by Christians on February second. It was used as a day to see whether spring would arrive early or if a colder, longer winter would drag on. Eventually, this morphed into the groundhog-centric tradition of revealing the upcoming weather.

This year, on a bleak Pennsylvanian morning, the notorious meteorologist saw his shadow. Unfortunately, this means that winter is prophesied to continue for six more weeks. Don’t be too saddened, however, for it is more likely than not that spring may actually begin to show its colors early. This unreliability is simply disheartening, and it poses the issue that maybe we shouldn’t trust him at all.

All of that being said, this annual holiday serves as a way for people to forget the bitterness of winter. Phil offers optimism amidst the worst part of the year. If worshipping a rodent is the solution to all of this misery, then so be it. Maybe his inaccuracy is even a blessing in disguise, because if Punxsutawney Phil predicts a long winter, you can rest assured that more often than not, he is wrong.