Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the world's largest parade, is an annual parade in New York City presented by the American department store chain Macy's. While not the first such event held in the United States, the Macy's Parade has become a traditional event watched by many millions of television viewers and in-person spectators each year. The parade was first held in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States with America's Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. The three-hour parade is held in Manhattan, ending outside Macy's Herald Square, and takes place from 8:30 a.m. to noon Eastern Standard Time on Thanksgiving Day, and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953.
The 100th anniversary of the first parade was 2024. Since the parade was canceled during World War II, the 100th parade will take place in 2026.
History
1920s: Early history
In 1924, store employees marched to Macy's Herald Square, the flagship store on 34th Street, dressed in vibrant costumes. There were floats, professional bands and live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. At the end of that first parade, Santa Claus arrived at Herald Square. At this first parade, Santa was enthroned on the Macy's balcony at the 34th Street store entrance, where he was then crowned "King of the Kiddies". With an audience of over 250,000 people, the parade was such a success that Macy's declared it would become an annual event, despite media reports only barely covering the first parade. The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade was influenced by the Macy's employees, who were mostly European immigrants.The Macy's parade was enough of a success to decrease the popularity of Ragamuffin Day, the typical children's Thanksgiving Day activity from 1870 into the 1920s. Ragamuffin Day featured children going around and performing a primitive version of trick-or-treating, a practice that by the 1920s had come to annoy most adults. The public backlash against such begging in the 1930s led to promotion of alternatives, including the Macy's parade. While ragamuffin parades that competed with Macy's would continue into the 1930s, the competition from Macy's would overwhelm the practice, and the last ragamuffin parade in New York City would be held in 1956.
Tony Sarg enjoyed working with marionettes from an early age. After moving to London to start his own marionette business, Sarg moved to New York City to perform with his puppets on the street. Macy's heard about Sarg's talents and asked him to design a window display of a parade for the store.
1930s–1980s: Growth
Through the 1930s, the parade continued to grow, with crowds of over one million people lining the parade route in 1933. The first Mickey Mouse balloon entered the parade in 1934. The annual festivities were broadcast on local radio stations in New York City from 1932 to 1941 and resumed in 1945, running through 1951.The parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944 as a result of World War II because rubber and helium were needed for the war effort. The parade resumed in 1945 and became known nationwide shortly afterwards, having been prominently featured in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, which included footage of the 1946 festivities. The event had its first broadcast on network television in 1948. From 1984 to 2019, the balloons were made by Raven Industries of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, through its Raven Aerostar division.
Marching bands had been part of the parade since the beginning. In 1958, the first celebrity performances were added, as the Benny Goodman sextet joined the parade. Technical and logistical difficulties marred many of the early attempts to perform live music on moving stages, and in 1964, the parade began transitioning to lip sync.
Since 1985, the parade has traditionally been led by the New York City Police Department Highway Patrol. In 2019, the cast of Sesame Street led the parade in honor of the show's 50th anniversary.
1990s–2000s: Safety changes
During the 1993 parade, strong gusts of wind pushed the Sonic the Hedgehog balloon into a lamppost at Columbus Circle. The lamppost damaged the balloon and the top of the post broke off while inside the balloon, dragging it down, injuring a child and an off-duty police officer in the process.During the 1997 parade, very high winds pushed the Cat in the Hat balloon into a lamppost. The falling debris struck a parade-goer, fracturing her skull and leaving her in a coma for 24 days. The winds also caused trouble for the other balloons. The Barney the Dinosaur balloon veered out of control, was punctured by a streetlight and deflated. The Pink Panther balloon collapsed onto the ground and was stabbed by an NYPD inspector. Mayor Rudy Giuliani formed a task force in response, and numerous safety regulations were implemented the next year, including size restrictions that eliminated larger balloons such as the Cat in the Hat and the Pink Panther, the removal of lamppost arms on the parade route, and both physical training and lessons in balloon physics for handlers.
In 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, which caused the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York City two months prior, there were debates about whether to cancel the parade. With the lingering scent of burnt metal and the continued rescue efforts being done at the World Trade Center site, some people felt it was insensitive to host the parade. Despite the backlash, the parade went on as scheduled, and it served as a symbol of resilience and a major step in the city's recovery after the attacks.
During the 2005 parade, the M&M's balloon collided with a streetlight in Times Square; parts of the light fell on two sisters, who suffered minor injuries. New safety measures were incorporated in 2006 to prevent accidents and balloon-related injuries. One measure taken was the installation of wind measurement devices to alert parade organizers to any unsafe conditions that could cause the balloons to behave erratically. In addition, parade officials implemented a measure to keep the balloons closer to the ground during windy conditions. New York City law prohibits Macy's from flying the full-size balloons if sustained winds exceed or wind gusts exceed ; New York's tall buildings and mostly uniform grid plan can amplify wind velocity on city streets. This law, imposed in 1997, has never been activated, despite several close calls; the only time the parade balloons were ever grounded was in 1971. Each balloon has a risk profile to determine handling in windy conditions; taller, upright balloons are rotated to appear horizontal and face downward in such situations. The remaining floats and performances will continue as scheduled should the balloons be grounded.
2010s–2020s
The 2018 parade was the coldest to date, with the temperature at during the event. The warmest was in 1933 at. The 2006 parade was the wettest with of rain. Actresses Caitlin Kinnunen and Isabelle McCalla's kiss during The Prom's performance at the 2018 parade received significant media attention for being the first broadcast of a same-sex kiss in the parade's history.Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, the 2020 parade was downsized and closed to the public, being filmed as a broadcast-only event in the Herald Square area. There were 88% fewer participants, and social distancing was enforced. The event did not include college and high school marching bands, nor any participant under 18 years of age. Balloons were tethered to a "specially rigged anchor vehicle framework of five specialty vehicles" rather than carried by handlers. Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio stated that it would not be "a live parade, but something that will really give us that warmth and that great feeling we have on Thanksgiving day." In 2021, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade returned to its traditional in-person procession with 6,500 participants marching.
The NBC broadcast of the 2022 parade marked the first time that the broadcast was hosted entirely by women, as Al Roker was unable to host that year due to blood clots in his legs and lungs.
In 2023, the parade started half an hour earlier, at 8:30 am, making it the first parade to begin earlier for almost a century. Around 10am, pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted the parade in three locations. Some of the protesters, wearing white jumpsuits covered in fake blood, glued themselves to the parade route at Sixth Avenue near 45th street. The NYPD was quick to intervene and arrest the protestors before they held up the parade too long with their actions.
Balloons
The balloons were introduced in 1927, replacing live zoo animals that were featured in the first parade. In 1928, Macy's switched from inflating the balloons with air to helium, making them float. Sarg's large animal-shaped balloons were produced by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio from the 1920s through 1980.In 1928, Sarg released the five balloons, set to leak slowly over the course of a week and then descend, with a reward of $100 for whoever found them; the reward amount fell to $50 the next year. In 1931, aviation pioneer Clarence Chamberlin spotted a dragon balloon midair, decapitated it with a wingtip, and brought the remnants back to land, where he claimed a $25 award. The practice of releasing the balloons ended in 1932, after a novice pilot attempting the same feat nearly crashed her plane.
The balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade have had several varieties. The oldest is the novelty balloon class, consisting of smaller balloons ranging widely in size and handled by between one and thirty people. The larger and more popular class is the character balloons, primarily consisting of licensed pop-culture characters; each of these is handled by 90 people. Since 2005, the "Blue Sky Gallery" has transformed the works of contemporary artists into full-size balloons; a new balloon was featured each year until 2012, and more intermittently since then.