Today in History - 1876

In honor of the American centennial, the first area-wide New Year's Day Mummers' Parade is held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Mummers' celebrations in America date back to colonial times, when the boisterous Swedish custom of celebrating the end of the calendar year with noise making and shouting was combined with the tradition of the British mummery play. Reciting doggerel and receiving in return cakes and ale, groups of five to 20 people, their faces blackened, would march from home to home, shouting and discharging firearms into the air while burlesquing the English mummers' play of St. George and the Dragon. Philadelphia, which had a sizable Swedish population, was the center of America's mummers' celebrations.