I love a parade, but tapping on feet, I love every beat, I hear a drum.

America loves a parade.

Whether it's Thanksgiving or Pride or even Hemingway Day.

We love to get out in the streets and tell a story.

Because every parade is a story, a story about community, about the connections in that community, about what the community values.

In each new generation, you should choose which parts of the story they're going to tell, and which parts they're going to change.

But today, on Snap Judgment, we send two of our producers, John Faseel and David Eximate, to cover a centuries-old tradition,

and the fight to keep it alive and save it from itself.

Snap Judgment.

Philadelphia.

No city celebrates New Year's like Philly.

Streets of Philadelphia explode with color and music and dance.

I'm John Faseel, I grew up going to this parade.

And I'm David Eximate, I never seen the mimmers.

Maybe it's because I'm from Jersey.

I'm from everybody, and I mean every body I have taught to.

Trying to explain what a mimmer is is really hard.

They're kind of like clowns, except they look stunning as they dance down Broad Street and they're shiny outfits.

Some of them with these big ornate back pieces.

The parade is divvied up into different sections.

Like the mimmers in string bands, what you're hearing behind me right now, play saxophones, banjos, and other instruments,

while executing choreographed routines.

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