New Year's traditions: A mummer, the Jersey Devil and a Philadelphia diner

Fantasy can teach us truths about ourselves

With each coming year, we often reflect on the year before and make goals (and resolutions) about what we hope will happen going forward.

But the New Year also carries a variety of traditions. Food can be a part of these traditions, and superstitions.

For me, New Year's Day feasting is all about pork and sauerkraut. In the Pennsylvania Dutch and German tradition, pork represents a pig rooting forward thus bringing good luck in the new year. Cabbage signifies good luck with money, as the cabbage leaf represents currency. (Sauerkraut is made from cabbage so that's why it's used, and it tastes good with pork.)

(To read more about the year and its food-related traditions, visit my essay here.)

And in Philadephia, New Year’s Day meant the Mummers Parade.

To celebrate the arrival of 2025, here is a segment from the story “Angel in the Pines” from my second book, Coffee in the Morning, a collection of short stories.

If you enjoy Larry’s Stories, don’t forget to click the heart or leave a comment. This is a place where you can share in the storytelling!

Angel in the Pines

Vincent De Christopher, a veteran mummer from the 1980s, is sitting in the City Diner at Broad and South St. in Philadelphia.

It’s January 2, and Vinnie De starts to tell his story to the waitress and another customer at the counter:

I clear my throat and stutter… “It was, it was, right out there when the wind came. I was in front strutting to Golden Slippers. My back plumage was magnificent, over 200 ostrich feathers. With it on my shoulders we reached to nine feet high and the weight was 55 pounds with my headdress. The weather was perfect for a parade, the high that day was something like 44° and just a slight little breeze. Then from behind me, I heard the music become jumbled and out of tune. The crowd was murmuring and there were shrieks of… ‘Oh, my God.’

Papers, feathers, and sheet music flew by me. I started to turn to see what was happening behind me, when a rush of wind echoed in my ears. I started being pushed from behind, a force that I could not stop. Then, the sensation of being lifted into the air.

The more I fought the force from behind, the higher I seemed to go. I glanced down, I must’ve been fifteen or twenty feet above the street. Started to pull my guidelines and my feet were kicking in the air. I was lifted higher and higher and higher all the while moving forward, almost straight up. I got up so high that I naturally stopped fighting for fear that I would fall and crash to the ground.”

“You mean you were actually floating in the air?”

“It was more like drifting or sailing,” I answer.

“This is incredible. How high were you?”

“Pretty Goddamn high. I glided with the wind at my back, so I was moving north on Broad Street. I was as high as Billy Penn. I looked at his face and he seemed surprised to see me. I’m suspended between William Penn on top of City Hall and the new building. You know, the first building that was taller than him.”

“You mean One Liberty Plaza?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the name. I caught a thermal, just like the birds of prey do. In a slow lazy circle, I flew higher and higher and higher. My heart was pounding, and I was chanting in time with my heartbeat, God please help me. God please help me.”

The young guy looks at the waitress and then to me.

“This is more than incredible. It’s freaking nuts.”

He points to his ear with his index finger and makes a circular motion.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I admit. “That’s why I haven’t told the story in thirty years.”

Liz puts her hands on the counter and leans a bit forward.

“Go on,” she prods me. “Tell the story. Don’t let us hang here in midair.”

“From the ground I must’ve been out of sight. Suddenly, I started to drop like a skydiver, and a scream came out of me that the heavens could hear. I was soaring on an angle headed toward the Delaware River. It must’ve been instinct that I positioned my body in such a manner that allowed the sky to sail over me. I felt like a superhero—Superman, Batman, and the Flash, all rolled into one. From Camden, I sailed over New Jersey in a straight line to the Pine Barrens where I was dropped in the middle of nowhere, my plumage and me stuck on a pine tree.”

Liz slaps her hand on the counter and points her finger at me.

“Wait a minute! wait a minute!” she interrupts. “I remember hearing something about this. Some mummer flew up in the air and disappeared.”

She pulls her phone from her apron pocket and pokes it with her finger. She then progresses from finger-poking to thumb-bashing. The young fellow does the same with his phone. The conversation between them passes in fragments and groups of letters, a language I don’t understand.

Yo, what the fuck are they talking about, I ask myself.

The young fella suddenly shouts.

“I got it, I got it! Look at the Philadelphia Inquirer archives, January 1, 2008. There’s an article by Tom Rittenhouse.”

“Okay,” says Liz. “It reads, ‘The Disappearing Mummer… The Captain of the Walking Aces, Vincent De Christopher, known to his fellow mummers as Vinny De, disappeared twenty years ago as he sailed down Broad Street and into the heavens. It was the biggest Philadelphia mystery in the twentieth century and remains a mystery to this day. Where did Vinny De go?’”

Liz stops reading the article, then looks at me.

“He didn’t go anywheres,” she says with a laugh. “He’s sittin’ right here.

Both stare at me and just about in unison say, “Is that true? Are you really Vinny De?”

Want to know the rest of the story?

Coffee in the Morning presents a collection of nostalgic short stories celebrating 20th century Americana, capturing the hopes, dreams and fears of multiple generations and different life circumstances. Similar to his first book, The Death of Big Butch, this carefully curated collection blends his experiences as observer first and storyteller second.

These sixteen stories weave from the backyard into diners and into forests, capture the other-worldliness of fairytales and the grittiness of misfortune. So visit the general store to discover the hero, explore perspective from the pawnbroker shop, pay your parking tickets, sleep beside the Jersey Devil, and never underestimate the power of a good Pennsylvania Dutch pie.

The book is available for sale via Larry or Parisian Phoenix, at Easton’s Book & Puppet Company downtown or at the Blue Flame Events Retail Store at the Palmer Park Mall.

(And, of course, all your favorite online retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, etc.)

Have a healthy and happy New Year!

God Bless and Have Fun!

Larry

Larry Sceurman, the author of nostalgic fiction COFFEE IN THE MORNING and THE DEATH OF BIG BUTCH, also has a dyslexia-friendly children’s book BOOKWORM’S MAGICAL JOURNEY.

You can get those Barnes & Noble loyalty points ordering his books online! Click here to see all of Larry’s titles on the Barnes & Noble website.

BOOKWORM’S MAGICAL JOURNEY uses whimsical characters to break down the concepts of learning to read. The book is available for sale via Larry, at Easton’s Book & Puppet Company downtown or at the Blue Flame Events Retail Store at the Palmer Park Mall. (And, of course, all your favorite online retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, etc.)