19 days away from the 2023 Mummers Parade!
The Mummer’s Parade is on January 1, 2023!
The parade begins at 9:00am, and we march from City Hall south on Broad Street to Washington Avenue.
Please join us for all the festivities!! Dave Grzybowski runs the PhilaStringBands page on instagram and he is counting it down! The photos and the music on this page are tremendous!!
Cool description from Wikipedia:
Mummering is a Christmas-time house-visiting tradition practiced in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ireland, City of Philadelphia, and parts of the United Kingdom.
Also known as mumming or janneying, it typically involves a group of friends or family who dress in disguise and visit homes within their community or neighbouring communities during the twelve days of Christmas. If the mummers are welcomed into a house, they often do a variety of informal performances that may include dance, music, jokes, or recitations. The hosts must guess the mummers’ identities before offering them food or drink. They may poke and prod the mummers or ask them questions. To make this a challenge for the hosts, the mummers may stuff their costumes, cross-dress, or speak while inhaling (ingressive speech). Once the mummers have been identified, they remove their disguises, spend some social time with the hosts, and then travel as a group to the next home.
Visit the Mummers Museum! The photos on that site are wonderful. If you visit you will see many costumes in person.
Special thanks to Dave Grybowski for all of these photos from the Philadelphia String Band Association!!