Mummers
Costumed performers who visit houses at midwinter with a folk play or dance.
Also: mumming, guising
Mumming is an old tradition in the British Isles and Ireland in which groups of people in disguise visit houses at Christmas and other seasons, performing a short play, dance or song, in return for food and drink. The classic mummers' play, of St George and the Dragon, has a hero, a villain and a doctor who revives the dead, and is acted in rhyme. In Newfoundland, mummering is still alive as a house-visiting game with disguises, and in Philadelphia the Mummers Parade on New Year's Day has been held since the 1900s. In Ireland, the wren boys visit with a decorated pole.
Region: Europe