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Show I Mummer's Parade Descendant From Early U. S. History On New Year's Eve 1930 more than 300,000 persons watched the Mummer's Mum-mer's parade in Philadelphia. There were 12,000 in the line of march down Bond street and the parade lasted from early evening until the glamour and good-humored burlesque bur-lesque antics of the spectacle were far cries from what the uninitiated would expect to see in the staid Quaker City: nevertheless, the idea is descendant from Colonial days. . The earliest settlers along the Delaware river in the vicinity of present day Philadelphia were English Eng-lish and Swedes. The Mummer play "St. George and the Dragon" was traditional to the English celebration of New Year's: the Swedes were given to informal masquerades. It is not clear just when or how the Mummer play and the custom of masquerading joined forces: but after the Revolution, General Washington Wash-ington replaced St. George as the central figure of the festivities. The whole thing was spontaneous and unorganized until, in 1886, it was sponsored by the Silver Crown New Year's association. In 1901, the Mummer's Parade was recognized recog-nized by the municipal administration administra-tion of Philadelphia, and officials and representative citizenry began turning turn-ing out to participate in and witness the parade. |
