MUMMERS PARADE ON NEW YEAR’S DAY IN PHILADELPHIA IS MOST AUTHENTIC FOLK FESTIVAL IN UNITED STATES New Year’s Day marks a very special event in Philadelphia -- an event that transforms a lot of ordinary people into a famous tradition. On that day they become Mummers -- climaxing months of top-secret planning, practicing and drilling. On the happy day, some 15,000 Philadelphia Mummers will “strut their stuff” on the streets of this great city. The 102nd NEW YEAR’S DAY MUMMERS PARADE, usually on  January 1 (weather permitting), is the most authentic folk festival in the United States. It is an annual upwelling of good spirits, laced with cultural contributions as diverse as millions of Philadelphia youngsters -- and all Philadelphians are young on New Year’s Day. Visitors come from far and wide to see this unique spectacle. Up to a million Philadelphians and visitors have lined the route, shivering under blankets but elated and curiously elevated. True Philadelphians know that the best way to savor the pomp and panoply, the gleeful gyrations of the Mummers, is red-nosed, in person. Capped and caped, speckled and sequined, the Mummers, following generations of family footsteps will strut on Market Street, from 16th St. to 5th St. On that fantastic morning, these Philadelphians are more than life-size. Their costumes are unbelievable. Their music - the distinctive string band strum - cannot really be duplicated off the street. Even their way of going is unique. Mummers never walk, they do not march, they don’t even dance up Broad Street. They cakewalk - like no one ever has. They do the Mummer’s strut, often imitated but never duplicated; it must be learned in infancy going “up the street.” To approximate the Mummers’ strut, you spread your arms, supporting an invisible cape; pumping your elbows, rocking and bobbing your body, you strut forward and back, sideways and in circles; all the way along the line of march. The revelry may last one day, but Mummer clubs work 365 days a year. They develop a theme, create costumes, build sets and props, and rehearse musical and dance numbers. The final performance isn’t for the money prizes, but for pride and bragging rights back in the neighborhoods where the clubs serve as unofficial community centers. COMICS - FANCYS – STRING BANDS – FANCY BRIGADES The day-long parade (it takes approximately eight hours to pass a point) has been codified into four divisions: Comic Clubs, Fancy Clubs, String Bands, and Fancy Brigades. Pursuing the most ancient tradition, the Comics satirize and ridicule any person or institution just as the Greek god Momus could mimic and the medieval jester could jeer at kings and things. In an innovation for the 2003 Parade, the groups of the Comics Division known as the “wench brigades” – more than 1,500 men and boys in dresses – will compete for first-ever special wench prizes. Comic prizes include originality, funniest couple, original character, and captain’s rig. Virtually everything is fair game for satire or praise and many floats are quite ingenious. The Fancy Clubs are an incredible explosion of a need for display, for pomp and ceremony. Awesomely glorious, their silks and colors easily outshine the most lavish trappings of royalty. Imaginative presentations are the hallmark of the Fancy Brigades. A theme - centered around an elaborately decorated Captain’s float - is carried out by 35 or more marchers in spectacular costumes as they move in undulating formations. But it is the String Bands that are the most popular manifestation of the Philadelphia spirit of revelry. They merge the urge for costumed display with a spirited and special sound -- the unique Philadelphia sound of strings and glockenspiels, at the opposite end of the musical spectrum from the famed Philadelphia Orchestra, also noted for its strings. While judging of the Comics, Fancy Clubs, and String Bands take place on the streets surrounding City Hall, the Fancy Brigades judging is done at an indoor performance in the Pennsylvania Convention Center starting at 4 p.m. at the conclusion of the parade. A permanent Mummers Museum, at 2nd St. and Washington Ave., was opened in 1976 for display of the prize-winning costumes and other memorabilia and the sale of musical recordings and other Mummer mementos to help finance the annual parade. (Get more Mummers’ information at the Museum’s website – www.mummers.com) MUMMERS HISTORY REACHES BACK TO PAGAN RITUAL Forerunners of Philadelphia’s Mummers may be glimpsed in the Roman Festival of Saturnalia, circa 400 B.C., when Latin laborers marched in masks through a day of satire and gift exchange; and in the Celtic variations of “trick-or-treat” and Druidic noise-making to drive away demons for the New Year. Philadelphia New Year noisery began in the 1600’s, with the Swedes on Tinicum Island in the Delaware River. These Nordics visited their neighbors on the second day of Christmas, ringing bells and pounding pots to frighten away the devils. British variations came to Philadelphia in the 1700’s. Parties of men, their faces powdered, painted and sooted, masqueraded door-to-door. Etiquette required that they be admitted without recognition as individuals, but as the characters portrayed. Gaelic seasoning came in the 1800’s. Irish immigrants ranged from the “Neck”, deep in South Philadelphia, as far north as Independence Hall, celebrating the New Year by blowing conch shells, tin horns, and speaking trumpets; pounding on kettles and pot-lids, ringing cow bells, and shooting off guns. Italian settlers brought more exotic flavoring to the Philadelphia New Year’s revelry with the Latin flair for costuming and melody. New Year’s Eve parties often burst out of homes to cavort through the streets of South Philadelphia. By 1877, these had become area parades, often stimulated by merchants’ prizes. Although all the variations of New Year’s celebration were officially banned during the 1800’s by the city fathers, the sanctions were never enforced. New Year’s Day, especially in South Philadelphia, was a hurly-burly of seasonal pandemonium, with organized clubs of shooters and mummers. The first, formal Mummers Parade going north up Broad Street was staged on January 1, 1901 and City Council appropriated $1,725 for prizes. This year, 2003, there will be over $395,000 in City prizes. The prize money was increased by $40,000 last year by Mayor John F. Street. Old-line Mummers stress the obvious: they do not parade for the prizes. Even when they win, the prize money does not even approach the cost. For example, it costs over $150,000 to suit up a String Band. Generally, funds are raised through parties, paid performances, recordings and club dues. Originally, Mummers’ wives and daughters sewed the millions of spangles and beads, but the costumes have become so elaborate that professionals now make most of them. This annual dramatic emergence of that special Philadelphian - a Mummer - has become an entrenched family tradition. The unmistakable sound of a String Band can start a Philadelphian strutting in the tropics or the Arctic. As all Mummers explain: “Mummery is a Philadelphia disease; it kind of gets into your blood . . .”