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.

Spectators on Wednesday flocked to Broad Street for the 124th Mummers Parade, ringing in 2025 as more than 40 brigades strutted southward in the nation’s longest continuously running folk parade. Men, women, and children twirled down the street dressed as mimes, bumblebees, jesters, and Scooby-Doo characters, dipping parasols along the way.

Despite overnight rain, New Year’s Day morning 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 Twisted Teas. Others carried coffee mugs disguising their morning brews and booze.

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

“Champagne!” the bearded gentleman cheered back.

» READ MORE: More photos of the 124th Philadelphia Mummers Parade

Festivities continued despite the tragedy in New Orleans hours before, where a man drove his truck into a crowd of early morning New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street, killing at least 15 and injuring dozens. The FBI is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.

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 if additional officers had been deployed.

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

Brooks Davis felt similarly.

“We can’t let it ruin the holidays,” said Davis, 30, who toted his 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son outside before the freezing winter temperatures return this week.

For D’Angelo Sanders, 28, and Paolo Carino, 31, the parade was a surprise. Walking their Bernese mountain dog near their Center City apartment, they followed the music and joined the crowd. After living in Philadelphia for three years, they said, this was their first time seeing the parade.

“What is this? What are they doing? It’s cool, but I’m also very confused,” Sanders said.

The parade’s roots trace back to New Year’s traditions brought to the city by Swedish, Finnish, Irish, German, English, and African immigrants.

Though 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 Snyder Station on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line shortly after 8:30 a.m., bouncing to music, with red wine stains on their teeth and half-empty beers in hand.

“It’s cool but I’m also very confused.”

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 in. 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. Others later joined with cigarettes behind their ears and empty booze cans clanging in their pockets.

Membership in the Mummers has dwindled in recent years, amid controversies over racist costumes. On Wednesday, the Oregon N.Y.A. wenches raised some eyebrows with their “Visions of Asia” theme. The group wore traditional Asian rice farmer hats, with some women in pink kimonos 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 had consulted with the Northeast Philadelphia Development Corp., a Chinese American nonprofit, “to develop a presentation that would appropriately reflect a Chinese New Year theme while keeping in the parameters of a wench brigade performance.”

The theme appeared to go unnoticed by most spectators.

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 begun their journey south, where they would eventually make their way to Second 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.