Thanksgiving in New York City means, notwithstanding family gatherings and turkey with all the trimmings, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
It all started on Thanksgiving Day, 1924 when Macy’s employees walked from 145th Street in Harlem to the 34th Street flagship Macy’s store. At that point called the Macy’s Christmas Parade, the first parade emphasized live animals from the Central Park Zoo. The parade was a major hit, drawing a group of people of a quarter million individuals. With that measure of success, Macy’s pronounced it would be a yearly occasion.
The live animals were discontinued right off the bat. Huge balloons supplanted them. In 1927, Felix the Cat, an air-filled blow up, made his parade debut. By 1928, there were other outsized balloons, helium-filled as they are to this day. At first, the balloons were released into the air, yet that custom was short-lived.
Valid to its root as a Christmas parade, a highlight of each parade has been the entry of Santa Claus at Macy’s to usher in the Christmas season. Generally, Santa provides a festive finale to the procession. The ubiquity of the parade developed amid the Great Depression of the 1930s. The spectators soon numbered more than one million. The festivities were broadcast provincially over the radio starting in 1932. The balloons portrayed famous characters, presenting Mickey Mouse in 1934 and Uncle Sam in 1938.
The parade was not held amid the war years of 1942, 1943, and 1944. Elastic and helium, used in the expansive balloons, were required for the war exertion. The parade returned in the first post-war year of 1945, on the other hand, and demonstrated as mainstream as ever. The line of walk started on 77th Street, proceeded down Central Park West to Columbus Circle, then onto Broadway and down to Herald Square at 34th Street. That course was taken after for a considerable length of time.
Film of the genuine 1946 parade was consolidated into the opening scenes of the first motion picture classic, “Marvel on 34th Street.” By the late 1940s, the neighborhood New York parade was being televised to a national gathering of people.