The Mummers Parade, an institution in Philadelphia since 1901, brought together many of the loosely organized groups of folk performers who roamed the streets each year between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. Known variously as mummers, shooters, belsnickles, fantasticals, and callithumpians, these masqueraders traced their roots to immigrants from England, Sweden, and Germany, who introduced mumming to pre-revolutionary Philadelphia. Throughout much of northern Europe and colonial North America, groups of mummers roved from house to house during the Christmas season, entertaining their hosts and expecting food, drink, or a small tip in return. Mumming and belsnickling in southeastern Pennsylvania persisted into the 1800s, not only in Philadelphia but also in smaller cities like Easton, Lancaster, Pottstown, and Reading.

Most nineteenth-century mummers were young, working-class men, and their street-side antics could be raucous. Philadelphia’s new, central police force eventually cracked down on unruly holiday celebrations, and H. Bart McHugh—a newspaper reporter and theatrical agent—led the effort to bring the mummers to Broad Street for an organized parade, with prizes funded by the city. In 1901 the city of Philadelphia sponsored the first official Mummers Parade, and the Public Ledger reported that “three thousand men and boys in outlandish garb frolicked, cavorted, grimaced, and whooped while the Mayor and members of Councils, Judges, and other officials, State and municipal, looked on.”

From the beginning, most mummers clubs specialized in comedy, music, costume, or dance, leading to an elaborate structure for judging a varied assortment of parade performances that included clowning, string bands, elaborate costumes, burlesque impersonation (the “wenches”), and Broadway-style staging and choreography. Until World War II, a plurality of mummers hailed from South Philadelphia, especially from the neighborhood’s Irish American and Italian American enclaves.  Kensington and Port Richmond were also well-represented in the early twentieth-century Mummers Parade, and beginning in the 1950s, mummers clubs sprang up throughout the region, especially in Northeast Philadelphia and the New Jersey suburbs. 

African American mummers regularly competed for prizes on Broad Street between 1901 and 1929, and African American composer James Bland wrote the parade’s unofficial theme song, “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers.”  However, the mummers in later years developed a reputation for racial insensitivity. Many mummers marched in blackface makeup until the city banned the practice following civil rights protests organized by Cecil B. Moore and the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP in 1963.  

The Mummers Parade grew considerably more diverse and inclusive after 1963. In the 1970s most mummers clubs began admitting women as performers for the first time. In 1984 the Goodtimers Comic Club, with an African American president and hundreds of minority members, started competing in the parade. At the behest of the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, the 2016 Mummers Parade included a new, noncompeting unit called the Philadelphia Division, organized with the explicit goal of making the parade more diverse. Participants included a Mexican American carnival organization, an African American drill team, a Puerto Rican bomba group, and a brigade of drag queens. 

Despite challenges from cuts to public funding and the closure or consolidation of clubs, the mummers maintained a strong record of resilience into the new millennium. 

Adapted from the new book Greater Philadelphia and the World, Vol. 3, A New History for the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press): “Mummers,” by Christian DuComb.