Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade draws crowds and holiday cheer despite New Orleans violence: ‘You can’t live scared’

They arrived en masse, the thousands of dress-wearing, face-painted clowns, leopards, and sparkling aliens, with golden slippers on their feet and drinks in their hands, descending on Philadelphia’s City Hall for a storied annual tradition.

“Who are these people?” a little girl asked her mother on the sidewalk.

The Mummers.

For its 124th year, spectators on Wednesday flocked to Broad Street to ring in 2025 and see more than 40 brigades strut southward for the city’s iconic Mummers Parade. Men, women, and children dressed as mimes, bumble bees, jesters, and Scooby-Doo characters twirled down the street, dipping their parasols as part of the longest continuously-running folk parade in the nation.

Despite rain overnight, the morning sky on New Year’s Day was relatively clear, with temperatures in the mid-40s. And while wind gusts made the air feel cooler, and threatened to whisk away loose hats and costume accessories, spirits were high. Couples toted wagons filled with blankets and boxes of Twisted Teas. Young people carried coffee mugs disguising their morning brews and booze.

“Coffee?” a skeptical, clown-dressed wench asked a man.

“Champagne!” the bearded gentleman cheered back.

Turnout appeared strong, seemingly undeterred by the overnight tragedy in New Orleans, where a man drove his truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street, killing 10 and injuring dozens more. The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.

In response, the Philadelphia Police Department said in a statement that it was closely monitoring areas throughout the city, including the parade. And while department leadership, including Commissioner Kevin Bethel, attended the Mummers event, the department declined to say whether it had beefed up the number of officers on site as a precaution.

“It’s tragic, but you can’t live scared,” said Tim Giffins, who watched the parade with his daughter and three grandsons.

In fact, the roots of the day-long party and elaborate costumes go back to New Year’s traditions brought to the city by Swedish, Finnish, Irish, German, English, and African immigrants.

While the parade kicked off at 9 a.m., most troupes initiated their celebrations hours earlier. A group of blue and white clowns from the Barrels Brigade, of the Landi Comics in South Philadelphia, filtered into SEPTA’s Broad Street Line Snyder station shortly after 8:30 a.m., bouncing to music with red wine stains on their teeth and half-empty beers in hand.

Michael Caruso, carrying a box of Surfsides, has marched with the brigade for 42 years, he said, and now his two children and wife join. It’s fun for the whole family, he said – drinking and strutting and carrying on a South Philly tradition.

As the subway arrived, Caruso, 43, pointed straight ahead.

“Clowns! Attack!” he shouted as they filtered into the car with cigarettes behind their ears and empty booze cans clanging in their pockets.

Membership in the Mummers has dwindled in recent years, amid occasional controversies over performers in racist costumes. On Wednesday, the Oregon N.Y.A. wenches raised some eyebrows for their “Visions of Asia” theme. The group wore traditional Asian rice farmer hats, with some women in pink kimono’s and kids dressed as dragons. Meanwhile, one man, with a vape dangling from the side of his mouth, waved an Italian flag in the middle of the crew.

The troupe, though, had followed all Mummers’ procedures required to use an ethnic theme, said Randy Duque, deputy director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. Duque said the group consulted with the Chinese-American nonprofit Northeast Philadelphia Development Corporation “to develop a presentation that would appropriately reflect a Chinese New Year theme while keeping in the parameters of a Wench brigade performance.”

Spectators appeared unbothered.

Fatmah Behbehani, 34, brought her two daughters to watch the parade for a second year. The family moved to the U.S. from Kuwait 10 years ago, and have been in Philadelphia for four. They’ve enjoyed learning the traditions of the city, she said.

And Jean Blasy, of Catonsville, Md., joined her boyfriend Rob McGuire, of York, in the city for her first experience. Attending had always been on her bucket list, she said, so they made it a holiday trip.

“I heard about it 10 years ago, and I said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna go there,’” she said. “And now here we are.”

By noon, about a fourth of the troupes had performed and began their journey south, where they would eventually make way to 2nd Street in Pennsport for more music, drinking, and dancing into the night.

Back on Broad Street, one woman, walking hurriedly toward City Hall, asked a friend: “And they do this for how many more hours?”

A lot.