One of the biggest and craziest traditions in Philadelphia is the Mummer's Parade on New Year's Day. Loosely based on the British Isles' tradition of Mummer's Plays, the Mummer's Parade is a seven mile long parade that starts in South Philly and heads north into Center City (downtown). The parade is a huge party, a contest for large cash prizes, and a celebration of longstanding Philadelphia neighborhoods and ethnicities. Some Philly natives informed us before we went that that many of the groups that participate are based on old neighborhood fire brigades and are therefore strongly tied to particular sections of Philadelphia, which explains the sense of family and community that came across with many of the groups.

Groups that participate spend a good chunk of the year coming up with themes, designing costumes, and based on how tipsy everybody was at ten in the morning, figuring out the best way to stash a keg on the back of their float.


There are four divisions: Comics, Fancies, String Bands, and Fancy Brigades. This year we only watched the Comics, because it was cold out and that one division took about 2.5 hours to go past our corner; the whole parade can last six or seven hours. The comics tend to choose current event or satirical themes and were really in it just to have a good time.






Next year, we'll go check out the Fancies and the String Bands, which are focused on much more elaborate costumes and music respectively. As we left we got to hear the String Bands coming up the street and they sounded awesome; bluegrass bands, New Orleans style jazz bands, all crammed onto flatbeds and rocking out.

The Fancy Brigades build such elaborate costumes that they no longer participate in the parade, they instead have a competition inside the convention center. We didn't get any photos of them, but the amount of effort they put into their performances is pretty amazing. From the local TV broadcast:



And a Creative Commons licensed photo from inside the Convention Center by Freakapotimus: