For over a century, central Pennsylvanians have gathered near the start of fall to celebrate Goose Day.
The regional holiday, primarily observed in the neighboring counties of Mifflin and Juniata, is a quirky one. Some locals compare it to Groundhog Day, but there’s a key twist: They eat the bird.
And they don’t only plop it into the oven like a Thanksgiving turkey, although a classic goose dinner includes familiar sides like mashed potatoes and corn. They get very creative, stewing the fowl into chilis, folding it into crepes, scattering it across pizza, tortillas, and flatbreads, and even turning it into confit.
There's also an associated festival, costume contest, and drone light show. It’s a honking good time, according to observers.
Why geese?
According to the legend, eating goose meat on Sept. 29 brings prosperity and financial security for the following year.
The belief has roots in the Christian holiday Michaelmas, which would mark the end of the harvest season and herald the settling of debts. In England, some tenants would pay their rent in part with a goose on Michaelmas, per the British Poultry Council.
How exactly this custom came to Pennsylvania is not exactly known, but one account promoted by the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau credits an 18th-century English settler named Archibald Hunter with importing the custom and sharing the idea that eating goose would bring good luck.
An alternative, more cynical theory mentioned in some 20th-century news articles is that a local farmer once needed a way to offload surplus geese.
Whatever the origins, Goose Day has turned into a multiday celebration and a point of local pride that enthusiasts want to expand even further.
Buffie Boyer, communications director for the visitors bureau, called Goose Day a kind of “sister holiday” to Groundhog Day. That Feb. 2 tradition happens on the same day as Candlemas, another holiday that’s both religious in origin and tied to the changing of seasons.
“I jokingly say, ‘You know, Punxsutawney was like us until they had a major motion picture,’” said Jenny Landis, the visitors bureau’s executive director. “Now, [if] Bill Murray shows up here and can do that kind of effort for us? I think we’ll also take off.”
“But in the meantime,” Landis added, “we're having a lot of fun making stuff up as we go. It’s called Goose Day, for goodness’ sake — we just like to have a lot of fun with it.”
Cooking the goose
Because Goose Day revolves around eating the namesake bird, restaurants play a big role in the celebration.
This year, a dozen eateries around the area will serve classic roast goose dinners. Altogether, local restaurants tend to sell 3,000 goose dinners on the holiday, per Landis’ estimate.
In commercial kitchens that don’t go the classic route, goose gets used as a topping, filling, or theme. Offerings this year include goose crepes, goose tacos, goose-shaped cookies, and goose poutine.
Since goose meat isn’t easily sourced, businesses pool together their orders. Jason Ufema, co-owner of Shy Bear Brewing in Lewistown, told PA Local he takes orders from other local restaurateurs, buys the meat in bulk from a Minnesota farm, then distributes it.
He also keeps some for his taproom.
Shy Bear has dreamt up different Goose Day creations over the years, including goose chili and a flatbread with goose, pomegranate, and herbs. This year’s specials include a French onion soup with goose confit and goose confit eggs benedict.
Ufema says confit best preserves the bird’s flavor while also extracting “a lot of the oils and generally the parts that aren’t very good to taste.”
Downtown OIP & Grille, an Italian restaurant in Lewistown, will serve pizza slices topped with housemade blueberry barbecue sauce, a cheese blend, and a sprinkle of roasted goose meat. Owner John Pannizzo got the idea one Thanksgiving, when he was eating turkey with cranberry sauce.
“I just wanted to participate, and it was really, really hard to figure out what we were going to do,” Pannizzo told PA Local. “I started thinking … ‘You know, I bet I could do something with blueberries and really make it something.’”
Since goose meat can get expensive — Pannizzo estimated that the actually edible parts of the bird end up costing around $20 per pound — it’s not a big revenue-driver, he said, but it gives people a more noncommittal way to participate in the tradition.
“We want people to eat it,” he said.
Michaelmas lore also involves blackberries, so local businesses add the fruit to slushies, moon pies, danishes, cocktails, and wines around Goose Day.
At East End Coffee Co., a coffee roaster with locations in Lewistown and Reedsville, the blackberry cobbler iced latte has been a huge success, said co-owner Ryan Cherry.
“To our staff and to us, that is definitely a Goose Day item,” Cherry said. “I’m not sure if our customers all see it that way … but people love it, and I think it just gives us all an opportunity to try something different.”
Evolving celebrations
PA Local found news clippings on Goose Day going back to the 1920s, but the holiday has changed over the years.
Some traditions have stuck — an annual 5K is in its 47th year, for example — but others have faded.
Case in point: Rhonda Kelley — the Juniata River Valley Chamber of Commerce’s executive director — recalls that around the late ’70s or early ’80s, police would watch for out-of-state license plates on Goose Day, then pull one of those cars over and invite the occupants to a luncheon at the chamber. There, they’d be treated to a meal and a basket of local goodies.
“Honestly, they were really good sports about it,” Kelley said, of the, um, lucky winners. “I mean, I don’t know that you can get away with it now.”
Beyond specific customs, overall participation in Goose Day has “ebbed and flowed” over the past several decades, Kelley said. Various local organizations, like a former downtown association and a local radio station, have at different points led the charge to promote the holiday to locals.
Kelley and others who spoke with PA Local credited Landis and the visitors bureau for the latest wave of enthusiasm.
That push began back in 2015, Landis said, when the visitors bureau launched an “I believe in Goose Day” campaign to crowdfund festivities and generate community buy-in.
“We had pins, and I talked everywhere I could,” Landis recalled. “And the idea was that yes, I believe it in two ways: One was if you eat goose on September 29th, you won’t want for money in the coming year. And the second one was locally, … this could become something if we all step up and do something.”
Despite a “slow start,” Landis said, 10 years later, the visitors bureau has managed to rally residents and attract outsiders.
Geofencing data from recent years has shown that most visitors come from a 50-mile radius, said Boyer, the bureau comms director. A smaller number of visitors have come from places like Altoona, Bloomsburg, Scranton, and Pittsburgh.
Some circumstances have made it hard for the holiday to spread its wings. One is the static date, which makes planning activities tricky when the day falls mid-week.
Another complicating factor is Penn State home football games. The university’s main campus is just 31 miles up the road from Lewistown, so hotels book up if Goose Day coincides with a game. That’s the case this year.
“It really impacts just how far we advertise what’s going on,” Landis said, saying she’d hate to encourage people to come from, say, New York, to see the drone show and then have to drive back that same night.
“We contract and expand depending on the home game or the away game,” she added.
More than just food
As the celebrations around it have grown, Goose Day boosters have tried to make it a deeper part of the two-county region’s identity.
“Wild Geese: Flock Together,” an ongoing public art project started by the local nonprofit Community Partnerships Resource Conservation and Development in 2019, is one such effort.
The initiative has led to over four dozen fiberglass goose sculptures — painted by artists from the region and sponsored by local businesses — being placed around Mifflin and Juniata Counties year-round.
Pannizzo of Downtown OIP, who has some childhood memories of Goose Day celebrations, credits the perennial art with helping him realize how “big” the holiday could be for the community.
“Sometimes we become a little insular with our stuff,” Pannizzo said, “but you know, people want to experience different things, and I think it’s good that we can share our story.” Pannizzo sponsored an early sculpture in Lewistown’s Monument Square, named Riverbed Featherhead.
The community-building aspect of Goose Day is key, said Ufema, the brewer and goose gatherer.
“If everybody is putting a wholehearted effort into not just making goose, but also promoting the fact that it’s different, and that it’s quirky and kitschy, even — you know, if everyone is on board with that, that’s part of the allure of the whole thing,” he said. “If we look at it strictly as a commodity … then I don’t think that there’s a whole lot that anyone can really rally around.”
Goose Day lovers have also organized a “Lucky Friday” community festival, which is now in its third year, to usher in Goose Day weekend and bring people together in downtown Lewistown.
“I think the idea of Goose Day is great … but I think there has to be a big event that goes with the holiday,” said Cherry, who helps organize and fundraise for the festival.
This year’s event — happening Sept. 26 — will feature “a bunch of vendors,” axe throwing, activities for kids, a reptile petting zoo, and more, he said. It’s followed by a goose-themed drone light show put on by the visitors bureau.
Cherry sees the growth of Goose Day festivities as a sign that the Juniata River Valley, and residents’ perception of it, are on the upswing.
“I think it gives the locals a reason to be optimistic about their town, and say, ‘Oh, have you ever heard of this weird thing? Well, this happens here every year,’” Cherry said. “I think it kind of gives them something to latch onto, especially when they’re out of town.”
Pannizzo echoed the sentiment: “The neat thing is, is we got something nobody else has, you know? New York has the big apple, Punxsutawney has Phil. This is what we have. We have Goose Day, and no one can ever replicate that. This is ours, and I love that.”
This year’s Goose Day goings-on run from Friday, Sept. 26 through Monday, Sept. 29. You can find the full list of festivities and specials here. Some restaurants may require advance orders or reservations.