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We will be making the masks in the Library Media Room from 1:00- 2:30.
November 20th-December 1st.

Let Ms. Boyce know by November 21st if you need additional materials for your mask.

In addition to the mask, please include a short paragraph on the inspiration for your mask. You may use the resources included here or find your own. Remember, this is a worldwide, but not very well known tradition.

Rules:
Mask must be appropriate.
Extra time will be give IF we see that overall it is needed.
Clean up MUST be done on a daily basis. This is a messy project. Please be considerate of the Library and staff.
Have fun!

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How to Make a Paper Mache Mask With a Foil Mold_43

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Philadelphia!

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The Mummers Parade, an institution in Philadelphia since 1901, brought together many of the loosely organized groups of folk performers who roamed the streets each year between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day. Known variously as mummers, shooters, belsnickles, fantasticals, and callithumpians, these masqueraders traced their roots to immigrants from England, Sweden, and Germany who introduced mumming to pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia.

Throughout much of northern Europe and colonial North America, groups of mummers roved from house to house during the Christmas season, entertaining their hosts and expecting food, drink, or a small tip in return. Mumming and belsnickling in southeastern Pennsylvania persisted into the 1800s, not only in Philadelphia but also in smaller cities like Easton, Lancaster, Pottstown, and Reading.

Most nineteenth-century mummers were young, working-class men, and their street-side antics could be raucous. According to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, New Year's Day 1876 witnessed impromptu parades by men dressed as "Indians and squaws, princes and princesses, clowns... [and] Negroes of the minstrel hall type." Philadelphia's new, central police force eventually cracked down on unruly holiday celebrations, and H. Bart McHugh (1879-1935)-a newspaper reporter and theatrical agent-led the effort to bring the mummers to Broad Street for an organized parade, with prizes funded by the city. In 1901 the city of Philadelphia sponsored the first official Mummers Parade, and the Public Ledger reported that "three thousand men and boys in outlandish garb frolicked, cavorted, grimaced, and whooped while the Mayor and members of Councils, Judges, and other officials, State and municipal, looked on."

Parading Up Broad Street

The original route of the Mummers Parade stretched up Broad Street from South Philadelphia to Cecil B. Moore Avenue (then known as Columbia Avenue) in North Philadelphia. Beginning in the 1920s, the Mummers Parade terminated at Girard Avenue, which shortened the parade route by five blocks. And after 1967, the mummers excised the North Philadelphia portion of the parade altogether, ending their march at the judging stand at City Hall. This contraction of the official parade route dovetailed with the emergence of the unofficial, post-parade celebration in front of the clubhouses on Second Street (or "Two Street") south of Washington Avenue, where many mummers groups met and rehearsed throughout the year.

From the beginning, most mummers clubs specialized in comedy, music, costume, or dance, leading to an elaborate structure for judging a varied assortment of parade performances. By 2011, mummers clubs competed for over twenty-five awards through the five traditional divisions of the Mummers Parade:

1. The comic division (or "comics"), focusing on satire and clowning.

2. The wench brigade division (or "wenches"), emphasizing a traditional, burlesque style of female impersonation.

3. The string band division (or "string bands"), featuring live music by large ensembles of banjoes and brass.

4. The fancy club division (or "fancies"), displaying elaborate costume design.

5. The fancy brigade division (or "fancy brigades"), concentrating on Broadway-style staging and choreography.

Until World War II, a plurality of mummers hailed from South Philadelphia, especially from the neighborhood's Irish American and Italian American enclaves. Kensington and Port Richmond were also well-represented in the early twentieth-century Mummers Parade, and beginning in the 1950s, mummers clubs sprang up throughout the region, especially in Northeast Philadelphia and the New Jersey suburbs.

African American Participants

African American mummers regularly competed for prizes on Broad Street between 1901 and 1929, and African American composer James Bland (1854-1911) wrote the parade's unofficial theme song, "Oh! Dem Golden Slippers." However, the mummers in later years developed a reputation for racial insensitivity. Many mummers marched in blackface makeup until the city banned the practice following civil rights protests organized by Cecil B. Moore (1915-79) and the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP in 1963. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, blackface still appeared at the nighttime party on "Two Street," after the official parade, and both the burlesque "wench" costume and the mummers' "strut" (the signature dance step of the parade) originated on the minstrel-show stage. In 2013 the Joseph A. Ferko String Band celebrated the mummers' connection to minstrelsy with a controversial parade routine titled "Bringin' Back those Minstrel Days," performed in brown rather than black makeup to avoid censure by the judges.

Despite its troubled racial history, the Mummers Parade grew considerably more diverse and inclusive after 1963. In the 1970s most mummers clubs began admitting women as performers for the first time. Women had long worked behind the scenes, helping to stitch the mummers' costumes, and one woman-a newspaper reporter named Laura Lee-snuck into the parade in 1929. In 1984 the Goodtimers Comic Club, with an African American president and hundreds of minority members, started competing in the parade. And in 1992 a group of Cambodian American artists and students teamed up with the Golden Sunrise Fancy Brigade to stage a Khmer dance drama on Broad Street. At the behest of the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, the 2016 Mummers Parade included a new, noncompeting unit called the Philadelphia Division, organized with the explicit goal of making the parade more diverse. Participants included a Mexican American carnival organization, an African American drill team, a Puerto Rican bomba group, and a brigade of drag queens. Although most mummers clubs embraced the growing diversity of the parade, reports of individual marchers using racist and homophobic slurs along the parade route complicated efforts to make the Mummers Parade more inclusive.

Turning to Corporate Sponsors

By the early twenty-first century, the Mummers Parade drew roughly eight thousand marchers and fifty thousand spectators on a typical New Year's Day, and hundreds of thousands of viewers watched the parade on local television. Until the financial crisis of 2008-9, the city of Philadelphia offered roughly $350,000 in cash prizes to be divided among all but the lowest-scoring groups in the parade. The withdrawal of city support forced the mummers to turn to corporate sponsors, including Southwest Airlines and SugarHouse Casino, to reimburse the city for the extra police and sanitation services that the parade required. In addition, almost twenty mummers clubs closed or consolidated during and after the 1990s, under pressure from dwindling membership, shrinking audiences, and the rising cost of mounting a parade performance.

Despite these challenges, the mummers maintained a strong record of resilience. Since 1901 the Mummers Parade has been canceled only twice, in 1919 and 1934 (although weather has sometimes forced a delay in the parade until the Saturday after New Year's). The Mummers Museum opened in 1976 to mark America's bicentennial, a symbol of the mummers' contribution to regional and national culture. When the number of spectators for the Mummers Parade started to decline, the city moved the parade route from Broad Street to Market Street to boost attendance-first in 1995, and again from 2000 to 2003. In addition, the fancy brigades began competing indoors at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in 1998, which allowed fans to enjoy their performances without enduring the cold temperatures outside.

Many mummers resisted these changes, but faced with ongoing membership declines and stagnant audiences, the mummers decided to reverse their parade route in 2015 by beginning at the City Hall judging stand and proceeding southward along Broad Street. (The wenches opted out of this route change, insisting on a traditional northward march). This literal change in direction reduced the gaps between performances at popular viewing spots in Center City, boosting the size of the crowds and demonstrating the mummers' willingness to adapt to the evolving tastes-and shortening attention spans-of the twenty-first century.

Christian DuComb, Ph.D., is assistant professor of theater at Colgate University and the author of Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia (University of Michigan Press, 2017). He performed as a comic in the Mummers Parade from 2009 to 2012.

Copyright 2016, Rutgers University

Cockrell, Dale. Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Davis, Susan G. Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.

Kennedy, E.A., III. Life, Liberty, and the Mummers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.

Leighton, Corey Elizabeth. "Strutting it up through Histories: A Performance Genealogy of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade." Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2009.

Masters, Patricia Anne. The Philadelphia Mummers: Building Community through Play. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.

Rothberg, Andrea Ignatoff. "Philadelphia Mummery: Individual Rewards and Social Interaction." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980.

Shoemaker, Alfred L. Christmas in Pennsylvania: A Folk-Cultural Study. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1999.

Sponsler, Claire. "Philadelphia's Mummers and the Anglo-Saxon Revival," in Ritual Imports: Performing Medieval Drama in America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004. 68-94.

Welch, Charles E. Jr. Oh! Dem Golden Slippers: The Story of the Philadelphia Mummers. Philadelphia: Book Street Press, 1991.

Wong, Deborah. "Taking (to) the Street: Cambodian Immigrants in the Philadelphia Mummers Parade," in Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York: Routledge, 2004. 53-68.

Urban Archives, Temple University, Samuel L. Paley Library, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia.

Frank Dumont Minstrelsy Scrapbook (1850-1902), Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia.

Mummers Museum, 1100 S. Second Street, Philadelphia.

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he Mummers Parade, an institution in Philadelphia since 1901, brought together many of the loosely organized groups of folk performers who roamed the streets each year between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day. Known variously as mummers, shooters, belsnickles, fantasticals, and callithumpians, these masqueraders traced their roots to immigrants from England, Sweden, and Germany who introduced mumming to pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia.

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Newfoundland (Ms. Boyce is a "Newfie.")

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One day each year, in St. John's, Newfoundland, the streets are filled with misshapen, masked figures. They are wrapped in quilts and oversized jackets, or bright boots and distinctive dresses, with undergarments worn on the outside. Their faces are obscured behind gruesome disguises, lacy veils, giant horse heads, or beneath ghost-like pillow cases.

These are Newfoundland's mummers, the latest iteration of a centuries-old tradition that has its roots in Europe but is entirely unique to this Canadian island. More than a thousand people come out to the Mummers Parade each year, to feel what it's like to shed their normal identity for at least a few hours.

"I see people transform when they put on a disguise," says Ryan Davis, director of the Mummers Festival. "A different character might come out of them. I've seen people go into almost a state of trance in their dance."

Newfoundland is as a far east as you can go on North America's Atlantic seaboard-if you start in Maine and head northeast, past New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, eventually you'd reach this vast island. St. John's, the capital, has a similar feel to a historic New England harbor town, where the water's never far away, only here the row houses are painted bright red, blue, teal, yellow, even purple and salmon pink.

For many long years, Newfoundland was a place mostly isolated from the rest of the world, dotted with fishing communities that were mostly isolated from each other. It's a classic set-up for divergent evolution, where seclusion incubates unique traits. The island's tradition of mummering was exported from a very specific part of the British Isles and refined into its own particular species, which, threatened by change, almost went extinct-until just a few years ago, when a local organization intervened in its imminent death and resuscitated mummering for the modern world.

The exact origins of the word "mummer" have become obscure, but they likely had to do with masks or the act of disguise. In England, mummers have dressed up and performed Christmastime plays, which often told the story of St. George and the Dragon and featured themes of winter and rebirth, for many centuries. In some places, mummers' troupes would also go from house to house to raise funds for their celebrations.

Over time, mummering traditions diverged and developed from place to place within the British Isles and spread, with British settlers, across the world. Philadelphia's Mummers' Day Parade is derived, in part, from Britain's mummer plays, in combination with Christmastime rituals that other Europeans brought to the city. But as mummering has been passed down, it's morphed in each place into an idiosyncratic tradition.

In Newfoundland, mummering has usually meant, in its most basic form, wearing a costume that disguises your identity and going from house to house, visiting your neighbors. It's a game of sorts: at each stop, the hosts would try and guess the identity of the mummers.

"Your neighbors would know the clothes you owned, the way you talked and walked," says Dale Jarvis, an Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Officer at the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, and author of Any Mummers 'Lowed In? "You couldn't use your own quilt because people would have seen it out on the line. So you would wear someone else's clothing, someone else's boots-boots too big or small."

Mummers also have to disguise their faces, and they worked with what was available-an old lace curtain or tablecloth, a pillowcase or flower sack with eyes cut out and, perhaps, a face painted on it.

Mummering in Newfoundland is all about reversals-turning the normal world topsy-turvy. Men might dress as women and women as men. Friends dressed in costume became strangers, and the odd creatures that visited in the night were revealed to be close friends.

But it wasn't all innocent fun. Many towns had a hobby horse haunt their streets-a ghastly figure whose costume might be made from actual bones and who'd chase anyone who wasn't dressed as a mummer. In the 1800s, parties of drunken mummers would walk the streets with sticks, or bladders full of rocks tied on, and they would use the cover of their disguises to beat others up. Sometimes the hobby horse skull would be used as a weapon. In 1860, a fisherman in Bay Roberts was killed with an axe by three masked men.

After that, authorities started cracking down on mummers' activities, requiring mummers to apply for a permit. When most mummers flouted that requirement, the government banned the practice altogether. For decades, up until the 1990s, mummering was illegal in Newfoundland.

The ban didn't kill the tradition, though. In cities, there were no more mummers' parties but out in rural areas where law enforcement was scarce, people would still get rigged up and go from house to house. Only towards the end of the 20th century did mummering really start to disappear, as the fisheries collapsed, the economy changed, and migration meant that more of your neighbors might be actual strangers, and "people were less likely to let masked strangers in," says Jarvis. (There is, however, a competing theory for the decline of mummering: people started getting carpets in their houses and were not interested in letting drunken masked strangers bring their muddy boots inside.)

In 2009, mummers first began returning in force to Newfoundland. On a December afternoon, hundreds of people converged on a gym in St. John's, ready to march through the streets in their elaborate (and not-so-elaborate) costumes. This parade had been organized by the Heritage Foundation and the local Memorial University's Folklore Department, in a bid to revive mummering from its senescence. Even that first year, it worked.

"Just the fact that 300 people, dressed in disguise, showed up sober on a drizzly Sunday afternoon for a parade that had never happened before was astounding," wrote Davis, who was the festival's original coordinator.

Now, each year, hundreds of people march in the parade. It starts with the "rig-up," where mummers can pull together a costume from a dozen tables piled high with donated clothing and hobby horse heads. More experienced mummers might give tips on the best costume strategies; people with accordions and musical "ugly sticks" might start an impromptu jam. It captures a bit of the spontaneity of the old tradition, when you might get a call asking "Do you want to go out mummering?" and have an hour to pull a costume together.

Even with more time to plan for the parade, there's a spirit of "ingenuity and creativity," says Davis. He's seen people wearing lamp shades as masks or using broiler pans and beer bottle caps to make instruments. One year someone dragged a Christmas tree through the parade on the ground, trailing a fragrant smell behind them. Another year, a woman dressed as a fish plant worker and wore a cape made of a net and dried fish. "It stank. It was a terrible smell," says Davis. "But it was also funny."

Dressed as mummers, strangers feel an unusual freedom to talk and tease. One year, a man was dressed as a hobby horse, and a woman started petting the horse, petting his mane. The horse started nuzzling back, being soft and cuddly, until all of a sudden, he turned mischievous and started snapping at her with his wooden teeth. She screamed, and slapped the horse in the face.

"You saucy horse!" she told him.

"In your day to day life, everyone is seemingly different. You're different ages and backgrounds, but on this day everyone is a mummer," says Davis. "That gives you a lot of license to interact with each other. That's what I love about it."

For a few hours, at least, you can dance and play-and no one will know who you are.

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Newfoundland's Mummering Tradition Is the Oldest And Creepiest in North America

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One day each year, in St. John's, Newfoundland, the streets are filled with misshapen, masked figures. They are wrapped in quilts and oversized jackets, or bright boots and distinctive dresses, with undergarments worn on the outside. Their faces are obscured behind gruesome disguises, lacy veils, giant horse heads, or beneath ghost-like pillow cases.

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Interested in this tradition? Research more!

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This tradition spread worldwide. Google "Kukeri Masks" for more information.

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Can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It became popular in Medieval Europe.

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A medieval mummer was a medieval entertainer who was an amateur actor. He performed at different plays in the villages that were held at the harvest time or on some religious occasion such as Christmas. Sometimes, these plays were specifically meant to preach the religious teachings but the main purpose remained entertainment.

What skills did a Mummer have?

What Plays did a medieval Mummer perform?

Who did Mummers entertain?

Where did a medieval Mummer perform?

What did a mummer wear?

Where did medieval Mummers live?

Mummers history

While a medieval mummer was quite popular during the medieval times, the concept itself existed in the ancient world as well. Thus the history of mummers can be traced back to ancient civilisations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In Europe, they became particularly popular as medieval entertainers during the middle and late medieval times.

Medieval Mummers Skills

A medieval mummer possessed all the skills required for a sound medieval entertainer. Other than acting in plays, this included skills such as acrobatics, singing, mimicry, and other kinds of entertainment. Eventually they formed into travelling bands of actors with different actors possessing specialised acting skills.

Mummer plays

A variety of plays were enacted by a medieval mummer. One common form was a guises' play which was mainly popular in the English speaking parts of Europe. This play was a comic performance mainly done is guise, although it was common to include various religious themes. In parts of Britain and Ireland, Plough Plays were also popular which were mainly performed on Plough Monday. Plays based on stories from the Bible became popular during the middle and late medieval times. It was also common to stage plays based on popular legends; One such legend was "St. George and the Dragon" and plays based on it were quite popular.

The Medieval Mummer had his origins in the ancient world

Mummers were most popular in the mid and late medieval times

Mummers formed bands and worked with other actors

Medieval mummers usually had specialised skill in a group (band)

Mummer Bible plays were popular with medieval people

Where did Mummers entertain

Most commonly, medieval mummers performed in open spaces where a stage could be set for the performers. Mummering parties were sometimes also held by nobles and monarchs in which case the plays took place indoors. Among English monarchs, Henry VII was famous for holding mummering parties where medieval entertainers enacted plays.

Medieval Mummers Costumes

It was common for medieval mummers to wear outrageous costumes during their performances. For example, men could dress like women and vice versa. Sometimes, costumes resembling animals could also be worn. The costumes mainly depended on the kind of play and mostly had an element of humour.

Mummers Medieval Christmas

Christmas time during the medieval times was very important for medieval entertainers, just like everyone else. Medieval mummers performed various plays on Christmas Eve with predominantly religious themes. For instance, various stories from the Bible could be adapted into plays and performed. In the Christmas season, plays performed during the All Souls' Day were called Souling or soul-caking and were quite popular in medieval Britain.

Medieval Mummers Summary

During the medieval times, a medieval mummer was an important medieval entertainer whose main vocation was acting. Thus a medieval mummer performed in various plays which were enacted for religious or social purposes. Other than acting, they also possessed skills like singing, dancing, mimicry, and acrobatics etc. During the late medieval times, medieval mummers formed into bands of travelling medieval entertainers with individuals possessing specific skills.

Mummers performed in wide open spaces such as fields

Medieval Royals and Barons held mummering parties

Henry VII was famous for the mummering parties he held

Medieval Christmas Eve mummer plays were very popular

Mummers had many skills such as singing, dancing and mimicry

We hope you enjoyed this article on Medieval Mummers and found it informative, we have tried to give the best facts and information on Medieval Mummers in this article, if you would like to add to your knowledge of medieval entertainers such as Medieval Mummers please look at the links at the bottom of this Medieval Mummers page that show other important medieval entertainers of the time.

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A medieval mummer was a medieval entertainer who was an amateur actor. He performed at different plays in the villages that were held at the harvest time or on some religious occasion such as Christmas. Sometimes, these plays were specifically meant to preach the religious teachings but the main purpose remained entertainment.