Groundhog Day Meaning
Alt 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.
If you ever need to explain why it always feels so weird to try to define/summarize a custom or tradition to readers who are unfamiliar with it, use this. Randall Monroe has cracked it. The rest of us can go home.
There’s no way that “foreign” customs are always “strange” or “worse” or “nonsensical”. It’s more that, if you try to explain ANYTHING from the ground up, it’ll always stop making sense.