Mummers Parade - History

History

The parade traces back to mid-17th-century roots, blending elements from Swedish, Finnish, Irish, English, German and other European heritages, as well as African heritage. The parade is related to the Mummers Play tradition from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Revivals of this tradition are still celebrated annually in South Gloucestershire, England on Boxing Day and in parts of Ireland on St. Stephen's Day and also in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador around Christmas.

Swedes, Philadelphia's first settlers, brought the custom of visiting neighbors on "Second Day Christmas" (December 26) with them to Tinicum. This was soon extended through New Year's Day with costumed celebrants loudly parading through the city.

Traditional New Years' celebrations of firing guns (Swedes and Finns) and recitations of traditional rhymes (English and Welsh) joined common practices of visiting neighbors. The Belsnickle, an early German version of Santa Claus, inspired comic masqueraders riding through Tinicum and Kingsessing dressed as clowns.

U.S. President George Washington carried on the official custom of New Year's Day calls during the seven years he occupied President's House in Philadelphia. The Mummers continued their traditions of comic verse in exchange for cakes and ale. Small groups of up to twenty mummers, their faces blackened, went door to door, shooting and shouting, spoofing General Washington and the English Mummers' play St. George and the Dragon.

Philadelphia's 19th-century Carnival of Horns drew thousands of merrymakers in festive costumes to the vicinity of Eighth and South Streets in the South Philadelphia section. An 1808 law decreed that "masquerades" and "masquerade halls" were "common nuisances" and that anyone participating would be subject to a fine and imprisonment. It was apparently never enforced and was repealed in 1859.

Henry Muhlenberg, writing in 1839, reported, "Men met on the roads in Tinicum and Kingsessing, who were disguised as clowns, shouting at the top of their voices and shooting guns.

Southern plantation life's contributions include the parade's theme song, James A. Bland's "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" (introduced by Charles Dumont in 1903), as well as the 19th-century cakewalk, dubbed the "Mummers' Strut" or the "2 Street Strut". Other ethnic groups have been integrated into the parade through the years. Italians began to participate in large numbers after World War II.

Celebrants using firearms to "shoot in" the new year much later inspired the "New Year's Shooters and Mummers Association". Revelers traveling from door-to-door sang and danced for rewards of food and drink. Cash prizes debuted in 1906.

Early Swedish Mummers appointed a "speech director", who performed a special dance with a traditional rhyme:

The earliest documented club, the Chain Gang, formed in 1840 and Golden Crown first marched in 1876 with cross-town rivals Silver Crown forming soon after. By 1881, a local report said "Parties of paraders" made the street "almost like a masked Ball."

The first official parade was held January 1, 1901. The earliest surviving string band, Trilby, first paraded in 1902 (with many breaks thereafter, and a reorganization in 1935. The Ferko String Band has never missed a parade since they started marching in 1923. In the early years of the official parade, the makeshift costumes of most celebrants were gradually replaced by more elaborate outfits funded by associations' fund-raising efforts.

While the parade has clear African-American influences and features a theme song by a black composer, the parade participants are almost all European American. The earliest parades were not. The all African American Golden Eagle Club, formed in 1866, had 300 members in the 1906 parade. With the nadir of American race relations, the last black groups marched in 1929.

The comics "wenches" and female parts in most skits are typically performed by men in drag. Women were not officially allowed in the parade until the 1970s.