Costumed participants in informal house-to-house visits at Christmastime in
Newfoundland (rarely, elsewhere in the New World) or in a massive parade held every
New Year’s Day in Philadelphia. Origins of both rituals are obscure. Either one may have
possibly developed, across the centuries, out of mumming in the British sense of the
term: folk plays at winter-solstice time, often performed in house-to-house visits. In
America, British mummers’ plays sometimes appear in “folk revival” settings. At
Pennsylvania State University, for example, the winter holiday party for families of
English Department faculty often includes a play in which St. George battles the Turkish
Knight, is revived by the doctor, and slays the dragon.
The Newfoundland custom, also known as “mummering” or “janneying,” resembles
“belsnickling,” which was more widely practiced in German American communities
through the early 20th century. With local variations, it normally involves a group of
adults disguising their appearances and voices. A resident who invites mummers to enter
asks ritualized questions about their identities, then requests a musical performance
and/or offers food and drink. Symbolically, the custom renders strangers less threatening:
Apparent outsiders to the community reveal themselves as insiders after all.
Symbolism appropriate to a large and ethnically diverse city, rather than to isolated
villages, appears in the Mummers’ Parade, sponsored by Philadelphia since 1900 after
two centuries as neighborhood-based, smaller parades. Tens of thousands of marchers
spend all year raising ideas and money to construct elaborate costumes—costumes, not
floats, for a mummer proves individual prowess by walking the twelvehour parade route
and doing a dance routine as part of a comic club (mostly Irish), a fancy club (mostly
Italian), or a string band or a brigade (some with names proclaiming ethnicity, like the
Ukrainian American String Band). Each year, each mummers’ club enacts a different
theme, such as a flower garden, a jailbreak, a carwash, or the Persian Gulf War. Many
themes include stereotyped portrayals of ethnic groups other than the club’s own. In
1993, for example, three of the top four brigade prizes went to “Singapore Swing,”
“Nonsense on the Nile,” and “Moscow Nights,” parodies, respectively, of Chinese,
Egyptians, and Russians.
Transplanted folklore, especially large-scale festivals and rituals, survives insofar as
immigrants redefine community concerns in reference to their New World situation.
British folk drama did not remain relevant. American mummers in the late 20th century
actively practice two folk traditions that have continued to grow, to change with the
times, and to remain meaningful to generation after generation of Newfoundland
neighbors in disguise and mummers proudly strutting up Philadelphia’s Broad Street.
Betsy Bowden
References
Brody, Alan. 1970. The English Mummers and Their Plays: Traces of Ancient Mystery.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Halpert, Herbert, and G.M.Story, eds. [1969] (1990). Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland:
Essays in Anthropology, Folklore, and History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1990.
Welch, Charles E., Jr. 1991. Oh! Dem Golden Slippers: The Story of the Philadelphia Mummers.
rev. ed. Philadelphia: Book Street Press.