Ellen Gray: For WPHL17 anchor Steve Highsmith, Mummers Parade is far more than a one-day event

* 2012 MUMMERS PARADE.

Pre-parade coverage begins at 9 a.m. Sunday, followed by live coverage of the parade. From 8 to 10 p.m. the Fancy Brigade Finale show airs in a tape-delayed broadcast from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. WPHL17.

THE MUMMERS Parade is more than a New Year's tradition to Steve Highsmith.

Much more.

The longtime anchor for PHL17's parade broadcast will spend at least eight hours on the air Sunday - assuming the weather cooperates and things go off as scheduled - but he's been prepping for this day for months.

Years, really.

"The unique thing about this parade is that it is not something you can just be handed a book on - even though we have a book - and say, 'Here is So-and-So, and this is what they're doing,' " said Highsmith, of WPHL 17 and NBC 10, who doesn't want to "dis any other parade," including that sunny extravaganza with the roses in Pasadena, Calif., but can't resist pointing out that the Mummers' strut is "not homogenized, it's not cookie-cutter.

"It's not put on by any cause or corporate, you know, entity." (This year SugarHouse Casino is sponsoring both the Mummers Parade and the fireworks at Penn's Landing.)

Thus preparation to broadcast it "is somewhat year-round, and then there's sort of like a sports season, there's a really intense period, and we're in the intense period now," he said in mid-December.

And he was already looking ahead to 2013.

"After the parade there are a series of events where I still go to the clubs for various award presentations. They have a lot of banquets that they do to honor their best performers throughout the year. Occasionally there'll be charity performances I'll go to," he said.

"Then there's the Show of Shows [in Atlantic City] . . . That's the last Saturday of February. Then there's the Summer Mummers down in North Wildwood and the Wildwoods. And there are other events that happen. And then as the fall comes around, that's when the string bands and the fancy brigades in particular really start ratcheting up what they're doing. And then in November, you kind of [do] a little bit more and then in December, it's all Mummers, all the time," as he spends weekends visiting bands and taping interviews for parade previews.

That's a lot of Mummery for a guy who encountered the parade "first as a citizen" when he moved here in 1981.