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With hordes of people, elaborate floats, music blasting… parades are zoos. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is no exception, in fact it might be the rule: especially given that in the first couple parades, live zoo animals from the Central Park Zoo walked the whole parade route! That ended by 1927, but when one tradition dies, another rises — up to 55 feet (17 m) to be exact.
The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade started in the Roaring 20s, after Macy’s had expanded to fill an entire city block between Broadway and 7th Avenue in Manhattan. Macy’s wanted to do something to celebrate, and there’s nothing more celebratory than a block party (a 120-cityblocks party, to be more precise). The first parade in 1924 wasn’t a Thanksgiving parade like it is today; it was a Christmas parade.
Initially the parade route started at 145th Street in Harlem and ran for six miles down to Macy’s at Herald Square — nearly three times as long as today’s 2.5-mile route. The parade was a success from the get-go: within a week, Macy’s announced its “gift to the city” would become an annual tradition.
Helium-filled balloons floated into the place of live zoo animals in 1927, and that tradition has been flying high ever since. Today, each giant character balloon is handled by about 90 trained volunteers! Talk about a hands-on job… or more accurately, a 180 hands-on job. From design to construction, creating a new balloon takes five months. They’re crafted such that if conditions are windy, the tall balloons are rotated horizontally (“face-down,” but at least they get a nice view of all the parade activities?) as a safety measure. In its 101 year history, only once has the wind forced the full cancellation of the parade balloons! That must have been a bummer, but of course it’s crucial to air on the side of caution.
The whole parade was only cancelled entirely during World War II, when helium and rubber were needed for the war effort. For three years, Macy’s donated 650 pounds of rubber from its balloons to support troops overseas.
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Today, this iconic annual tradition features over 8,000 employees and performers, 12 marching bands from across the US, performances from four Broadway shows, the Radio City Rockettes, a partridge, and a pear tree. Okay, maybe not those last two, but it does almost always have a Snoopy balloon. He’s appeared in ruff-ly every parade since 1968! For those who don’t want to brave the cold or the rowdy crowds of about 3.5 million onlookers, luckily the parade has been broadcast on TV since 1948. In 2024, a record 31.3 million viewers tuned in!
This $13 million production has inflated its way into the heart of Thanksgiving tradition, but it’s also become a symbol of New York’s resilience, most notably in 2001, when it went on as scheduled just a few months after the September 11 attacks. If there’s anything New Yorkers are strong enough for, it’s keeping traditions afloat and showing up — even at 8:30am on a chilly November morning.
