Passover doesn’t include any rituals that involve marmots making predictions about the weather, but there’re still surprising parallels between the folk traditions that grew into Groundhog Day, and the agricultural origins of Pesach.

The two holidays’ common ground is definitely their shared obsession with spring. While Passover originated as a celebration of the spring harvest, Groundhog Day has been linked to a couple of spring-oriented holidays: Candlemas, a Christian feast day observed on February 2, and Imbolc, a Celtic festival that marks the start of spring and is traditionally celebrated on February 1. In the case of Candlemas, according to German folk tradition, if a badger can see its shadow on that day, six more weeks of winter will follow. Little wonder then that when Germans began immigrating to Western Pennsylvania in the 18th century, this custom took root there, too. Even though Imbolc could have provided the basis for the woodchuck’s day of glory, in the United States it was the Pennsylvania Germans who celebrated the first official Groundhog Day in 1887.

From its beginnings as an agricultural celebration, Passover evolved to include the ritual slaughter of a pascal lamb — an offering of thanksgiving for the Israelites’ liberation from slavery. From there, it became the often idiosyncratic celebration we know today. Think about it — sometimes it seems like every Jewish family has its own Seder customs, DIY haggadahs with content from a zillion different sources, and special foods and recipes that only get made at that time of year.

Likewise, Groundhog Day may have started as a Germanic — or perhaps Celtic — rite to celebrate the conclusion of winter and the long-awaited onset of spring, but today it has its own set of crazy rituals and unconventional lore. One of the more interesting stories includes a Prohibition-era legend that Punxsutawney Phil, as the official groundhog of Groundhog Day is known, refused to give his prediction until he’d had a drink! (If you like that one, check out a few others over at the Huffington Post.)

When you’re one day away from the end of Passover, sometimes it can feel a little bit like Groundhog Day: any sign that a dreary diet of matzah, farfel and their offshoots will soon be over is a welcome ray of hope. So while we’d be surprised if anyone started munching on matzah at Punxsutawney Phil’s next prognostication, if they did, it wouldn’t be totally out of place. Like we said, sometimes Passover can really feel a lot like Groundhog Day.