A little background, first.
So, before I can talk about the parade, I have to explain the Mummers as best I can, because otherwise you cannot properly appreciate how completely Jason Kelce stole the show.
I grew up about 30 miles from here, and I was always vaguely aware of the Mummers as a thing that happened. Buncha grown men dressed like old-timey Vegas showgirls with the gigantic fans made of feathers? Something like that. And I would see them on TV, bunches and bunches of them together, running around like lunatics or doing the strut I showed you in the previous post. But they were always on the periphery of my worldview. I hadn't thought about them much.
Not until I moved here and went out for an errand on New Year's Day and ran smack up against real, live Mummers post-parade. They were EVERYWHERE. Large grown men with that Philadelphia beer belly, in bright shiny satin and sequin costumes, and sneakers painted gold, just sort of ... walking through the neighborhood and mingling.
(To get an idea what Mummers are like, just search for the term on YouTube. To get an idea how utterly ridiculous they can sometimes be, look for the Mummers comics specifically.)
And then in the evening ... well. :) I wrote a filtered post about that complete with pictures and video, so I think you can get a good sense of the fun from that. I look forward to this every year, and now that Lynn and Christie are here, they go out to enjoy it with me too.
(There have been a number of incidents through history, even embarrassingly recent history, where Mummers have been grossly insensitive to women and certain minorities and ethnic groups, and there's a lot of binge drinking which causes problems, and I fully acknowledge that and hope they continue to improve. But that's not the point of this post. Also, they've started inviting minority groups to participate in their own particular celebratory fashion, and there are drag queens in the parade now, which is all kinds of awesome.)
What's also interesting to me is that Mummers are SERIOUS BUSINESS for the people involved. They practice for a good part of the fall -- you sometimes see groups of them practicing underneath I-95 -- and they are always really pumped when parade time comes. The woman who cut my hair for 15 years is from a Mummers family. They're in one of the Fancy Brigades, and her group actually made it several rounds into America's Got Talent. She was over the moon about it, and every time I got my hair cut before or after the the first of the year she was always super excited about the upcoming parade and festivities.
Her entire family (husband and two sons as well as herself) was involved in it. And if you watch the footage, you see nowadays that there a lot of children involved in the parades, from toddlers being held by strutting parents to children of all ages in costume and participating. It's really cool. And I like that we're the only city in the US who does this. It's uniquely Philadelphia. Since it originated in South Philly, it's primarily the blue-collar contingent that's involved in it, and I enjoy that aspect of it too. All the people who have lived here for multiple generations who have that Philly accent and the Philly atty-tood.
I grew up about 30 miles from here, and I was always vaguely aware of the Mummers as a thing that happened. Buncha grown men dressed like old-timey Vegas showgirls with the gigantic fans made of feathers? Something like that. And I would see them on TV, bunches and bunches of them together, running around like lunatics or doing the strut I showed you in the previous post. But they were always on the periphery of my worldview. I hadn't thought about them much.
Not until I moved here and went out for an errand on New Year's Day and ran smack up against real, live Mummers post-parade. They were EVERYWHERE. Large grown men with that Philadelphia beer belly, in bright shiny satin and sequin costumes, and sneakers painted gold, just sort of ... walking through the neighborhood and mingling.
(To get an idea what Mummers are like, just search for the term on YouTube. To get an idea how utterly ridiculous they can sometimes be, look for the Mummers comics specifically.)
And then in the evening ... well. :) I wrote a filtered post about that complete with pictures and video, so I think you can get a good sense of the fun from that. I look forward to this every year, and now that Lynn and Christie are here, they go out to enjoy it with me too.
(There have been a number of incidents through history, even embarrassingly recent history, where Mummers have been grossly insensitive to women and certain minorities and ethnic groups, and there's a lot of binge drinking which causes problems, and I fully acknowledge that and hope they continue to improve. But that's not the point of this post. Also, they've started inviting minority groups to participate in their own particular celebratory fashion, and there are drag queens in the parade now, which is all kinds of awesome.)
What's also interesting to me is that Mummers are SERIOUS BUSINESS for the people involved. They practice for a good part of the fall -- you sometimes see groups of them practicing underneath I-95 -- and they are always really pumped when parade time comes. The woman who cut my hair for 15 years is from a Mummers family. They're in one of the Fancy Brigades, and her group actually made it several rounds into America's Got Talent. She was over the moon about it, and every time I got my hair cut before or after the the first of the year she was always super excited about the upcoming parade and festivities.
Her entire family (husband and two sons as well as herself) was involved in it. And if you watch the footage, you see nowadays that there a lot of children involved in the parades, from toddlers being held by strutting parents to children of all ages in costume and participating. It's really cool. And I like that we're the only city in the US who does this. It's uniquely Philadelphia. Since it originated in South Philly, it's primarily the blue-collar contingent that's involved in it, and I enjoy that aspect of it too. All the people who have lived here for multiple generations who have that Philly accent and the Philly atty-tood.