On the same day that the World Champion Philadelphia Eagles ended their bid for a repeat championship in South Philly by losing to the San Francisco 49ers 23–19, Philadelphia found another use for Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday, January 31st. That afternoon, the Mummer’s String Band Competition will go forward after being delayed due to dangerous weather on New Year’s Day.
Twenty-four hours after the 125th Official Mummer’s Day Parade in Philadelphia — a 2026 celebration that was impacted due to weather conditions that even caused injuries and delayed the String Band Competition— here is what we learned about one of Philadelphia’s oldest New Year’s Day traditions: Philadelphia does a parade as well as any place in America.
When our metropolis officially began the tradition of a parade for the Mummer’s back at the turn of the 20th century, it wasn’t only that they necessarily thought that the grandeur of the tradition would flourish for the next 125 years, but rather because the very roots of the celebration had existed within modern Philadelphia’s city limits for the some twenty decades prior.
If you were fortunate enough to secure a spot on Broad Street last February for the Eagles Championship Parade — you know that even for a city whose NFL Franchise has only won two Super Bowls in its nearly 92-year history — we know how to celebrate. And our parades — from a Grand Federal Procession in 1788 to an English Army celebration in Philadelphia’s streets prior to ending a foreign occupation a decade earlier to a euphoric wintertime commemoration of an NFL Championship last February — one thing that Philadelphia knows is its parades.
One hundred and seven years ago this fall — amid a pandemic affecting both our region and the nation and a spreading sickness much like the covid pandemic — jubilant Philadelphians flooded the streets in an unbridled show of celebration. In case you were the least bit curious about what would make the population of the city at that time forget about a global spread, a (virulent) disease that was running like wildfire throughout America and the chance of contracting and even possibly perishing like so many people, it was the chance to relieve yourself of the emotions of the end of another early 20th century nightmare. Armistice Day marked the end of the terror of World War I, a global conflict where Philadelphians had lost their lives in foreign lands.
Five weeks earlier, Philadelphia had held the Liberty Loans Parade — a gathering of some 200,000 that is theorized to have been a super-spreader for some of the subsequent rising Spanish Flu cases in the city.
This fall also marked ten years since the beginning of Philadelphia’s Veteran’s Day Parade that went from Broad and Walnut Streets and culminated at Independence Hall on a November Sunday in 2015. This fall’s celebration kicked off near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and moved in the shadow of the Art Museum, finally concluding at Eakins Oval.
But the Liberty Loans Parade back in 1918 wasn’t the only parade in Philadelphia history that is not necessarily looked back upon with fondness. In June of 1778, the British ended their occupation of Philadelphia with a celebration called The Meschianza — which included an extravagant parade.
But when it comes to parades in present-day America — Philadelphia’s past is rich with significant historical gatherings. Our St. Patrick’s Day Parade dates back to 1771 and during our Revolutionary War General George Washington even announced that it was a holiday for Irish soldiers serving in the Army. And of course, our Thanksgiving Day Parade dates from 1920, coordinated by Gimbel’s Department Store right here in the city.
At the top of our city’s historical parades is perhaps our (most well-known) of all — our signature event of annual celebrations. It’s believed that the very foundations of the modern Mummers Parade began here around 1691. One hundred and twenty years ago in 1901 was the first Mummer’s Parade organized by the city.
By then, the joyous traditions that the earliest residents in the city put together in the seventeenth century had roots going back to the ancient Egyptians, European influence, and even takes its name from Greek mythology. The then-Tinicum part of the city was treated by the Finnish and Swedish settlers to the very beginnings of a celebration (Second Day Christmas) that would soon become an unmistakable part of annual Philadelphia history. To this day, it is the oldest folk parade in America still held each and every year.
Whether a twenty-first century parade on Veteran’s Day, a commemoration of the end of World War I on Broad Street, or a 17th century celebration that would become the Mummers Parade and its official 1901 beginning as an official event in the City— those jubilant celebrations aren’t just American. They are truly a part of Philadelphia — a part that doesn’t just honor what is but rather what has been since European colonization between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers.
Equally as important is that it honors what will be.
Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington Township, PA.
