Salute to a 100-Year-Old Parade
In honor of the centennial anniversary of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, this blog post breaks from the usual pattern. The annual event is not the first Thanksgiving Day Parade. Philadelphia hosted a similar parade four years earlier, in 1920, and Detroit held one the same year that New York introduced its parade. Local department stores sponsored all three parades to kick off the Christmas shopping season. Although not the first, Macy’s event in New York is the most famous and the one that has become synonymous with Thanksgiving Day parades.
In 1924, Macy’s decided to have a parade on Thanksgiving morning. Despite the date, the stored called it Macy’s Christmas Parade. The name was appropriate because the three-hour event ended with Santa descending from a float in front of the store.
The parade, which began in Harlem, featured floats with storybook characters like Little Red Riding Hood, animals from the Central Park Zoo, and employees dressed as clowns, cowboys, and knights. When lined up, the participants stretched two blocks—a small fraction of today’s participants. Spectators stood at least four people deep along the six-mile route. These days the route is much shorter, only two-and-a-half miles, but the number of participants has swelled with the addition of marching bands from across the country. As in its inaugural year, the parade still takes three hours.
Helium balloons, now a highlight of the parade, made their debut in 1927. The first balloon was Felix the Cat, designed by master puppeteer Tony Sarg.
The modern helium balloons that fly high over the parade require dozens of handlers. Many New Yorkers converge on the Upper West Side the night before the parade to watch the balloons rise from the ground as they are filled with gas. Millions of Americans gather around television sets to watch the parade on Thanksgiving morning. It’s become as much a Thanksgiving tradition as turkey and televised football.
Happy 100th birthday, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!