The holiday season in New York City would be unthinkable without the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which was first put on 100 years ago by the employees of Macy’s in Herald Square. Then known as the Macy’s Christmas Parade, it fulfilled the dual goal of bringing attention to a recent store expansion and celebrating the season. Today, the procession is indelibly linked to the City’s creative spirit and helps usher in a period of high-traffic shopping, window decorations and festivities across the boroughs.
While there are holiday parades that predate it, this one could only come about in New York City. Thanks to the ingenuity of its producers and volunteers, the Macy’s parade has innovated all kinds of unique elements over the years, most notably the use of giant balloons floating over the streets. And in the spirit of the City, the parade endures through most everything, stopping only for a few years during World War II and taking place even in 2020, when the team designed a shorter, smaller parade, with more utility vehicles and fewer people.
Will Coss, executive producer of Macy’s special events, calls it “the largest variety show in the history of broadcast television,” which is no understatement. Super Bowl halftime performances take place on a football field for about 12 minutes. In contrast, the Thanksgiving parade commandeers a long stretch of some of the busiest streets in New York City (lined by millions of spectators), lasts three-plus hours and involves more than 25 floats, nearly 50 balloons and scores of performers. Tens of millions of homes tune in as viewers prepare for their own Thanksgiving get-togethers.
Courtesy, Macy's
It’s no wonder that Coss takes his responsibility seriously, including keeping ties to the parade’s origins: “It was brought together by a diverse representative of colleagues who wanted to create a special moment and remains something that we all still look forward to for the holiday season.”
Ahead of this year’s parade, we’re looking back at how it began and morphed into its current incarnation.
The 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will take place on November 28, 2024; the start time is 8:30am ET, and the route begins at the corner of West 77th Street and Central Park West.
Santa float, 1924. Courtesy, Macy's
The first parade: clowns, zoo animals and Santa
The inaugural event, on November 27, 1924, featured theatrical elements and live animals from the Central Park Zoo, paving the way for the stagecraft that was to come. Thousands of people lined up four or five deep to witness the event, which had promised an “animal circus” in advertisements. In its coverage afterward, The New York Times described the “retinue of clowns … animals and floats” accompanying Santa, a “bewhiskered man in red.”
Santa balloon, 1940. Courtesy, Macy's
The elaborate (if not in comparison to today’s version) celebration promoted an expansion of the West 34th Street store, which had opened two decades earlier after 40-plus years along 14th Street. But it was not Macy’s first foray into holiday festivities. Back in 1883, the retailer began fashioning window displays, crafting animated scenes to attract passersby. The holiday-themed window known as “Fair Frolics of Wondertown” was revealed by Santa to conclude the inaugural parade, and the annual ritual of window decorations continues to this day, having spread to many major department stores in Midtown Manhattan and beyond.
As it did until 1945, the parade began in Harlem, at Convent Avenue and West 145th Street, and made its way down to Herald Square, traversing some 6 miles. Escorting the floats were participants dressed like figures from nursery rhymes, including the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Little Miss Muffet.
Felix the Cat, 1927. Courtesy, Macy's
Character balloons, then and now
As popular as Santa is, the signature element of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is undoubtedly the balloons. They started as what Coss describes as “inverted marionettes”—the brainchild of Anthony Frederick Sarg, a puppeteer and animator living in New York City. Initially filled with cold oxygen, the balloons have been inflated with helium since 1928, barring a few years when the gas was in short supply.
The first character to appear was Felix the Cat, originally seen in the 1919 silent film Feline Follies. Felix was a popular figure throughout the 1920s, and instant familiarity is a characteristic that the parade directors still consider relevant today. “We want every balloon, in a single moment’s notice, to be immediately recognizable and light up excitement along the parade route,” says Coss.
Some of that excitement took place in 1937, when Sarg showed his flair for the dramatic. In late summer, there were news reports of a monster sighting off the coast of Nantucket. It turned out to be a creation—and prank—of Sarg’s; he spent his summers there and was creating a stir with a character ballon. The Nantucket Sea Monster, as it was known, lated showed up as a balloon in the parade.
Meanwhile, Felix retained a prominent role until World War II and was most recently brought back in 2016, has been joined by an assortment of other characters, many familiar from pop culture and some introduced by Macy’s itself.
Peanuts float, 1960s. Courtesy, Macy's
There have been members of the Peanuts gang, as well as the superheroes Superman, who first appeared in 1940, and Spider-Man. An NYC icon like the parade, the Forest Hills, Queens, native is an old favorite, and Coss says the web slinger is coming back this year. Dora the Explorer represents the modern cast of introductions to have made multiple appearances. And this doesn’t even begin to approach the depths of the so-called novelty balloons that Macy’s has created, such as Tom Turkey, a balloon-float (or “ballonicle,” according to some) that has been around for decades.
Broadway Belle Showboat, 1950s. Courtesy, Macy's
More perennial elements
Alongside the balloons, many celebrities, marching bands and floats frequently return regularly or are reinvented anew. The Radio City Rockettes, for example, have performed every year since 1958, according to an exhaustive wiki devoted to the parade. The likes of Danny Kaye, Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett and Bad Bunny have all made star turns. Bands typically include the New York Police Department Marching Band (a presence for more than 30 years), the Macy’s Great American Marching Band and a host of rotating troupes from high schools and universities across the country.
Looking back at what has appeared in the past is part of the ongoing creative process, Coss says. The Doodlebug, a heritage piece that debuted in 1968 and was reinvented for 2022, is one of his favorites; it’s an unusual one, a “drivable float that has a serpentine route and adds a bit of whimsy.” There are plenty more floats that make their way along the route, old and new; while Santa is always one of them, six of this year's 22 floats will be making their parade debuts.
Happy Hippo, 1940s. Courtesy, Macy's
How and where the magic takes place
Though the setup on the street takes place overnight, what comes before it is a year to 18 months’ worth of preparation. Coss oversees a production crew of designers, carpenters, and metal and balloon fabricators. They collaborate with other teams to oversee logistics and make sure everything is built, tested and comes off smoothly on the big day. The goal, Coss says, is to “bring the most sense of spectacle and joy.” That means coming together early on to go through what they want to introduce or bring back and “workshop different creative executions,” according to Coss. The balloons are manufactured at a studio in New Jersey and inflated the night before near the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side—an occasion that has become an attraction in its own right.
Not only do the concepts and execution need to work for the crowds that line the route—which now runs from West 77th Street and Central Park West to West 34th Street and Seventh Avenue—they have to work for the millions watching on TV. Success in realizing such a tall order is supported by Coss’s experience in television production and his personal connection to the parade.
“I attended numerous times with my grandmother, my aunt and mother and family,” he says. “Ever since I was quite young, I wanted to be part of some level of entertainment, togetherness and art—a mechanism that helped to create a little joy.”
Happy Dragon, 1927. Courtesy, Macy's
“It can only exist here”
The pageantry of the parade is amplified by its dramatic surroundings—Central Park, the Upper West Side, Midtown’s skyscrapers and its final stop, the largest (and one of the oldest) department stores in the United States—and the legions of people involved. Among them number thousands of volunteers who take part as clowns, balloon handlers and many other roles. Their presence reflects the creativity and spirit of the very first parade, and honors their own histories. Coss says, “Some are decades-long volunteers and have passed on that great tradition to their children and, sometimes, grandchildren.”
And then there are the devoted enthusiasts who get up at dawn to secure prime viewing spots. As Coss describes the parade experience, “It can only exist here. There aren’t many moments to bring millions of people together in the City, standing shoulder to shoulder for a few hours.”
Courtesy, Macy's
Fun parade numbers
50 million Number of people who watch on TV
3.5 million Estimated number of spectators along the parade route
1958 The year that cranes were used to keep the balloons aloft, due to a national helium shortage
700 Estimated number of clowns scheduled for the 2024 parade (plus 32 balloons and inflatables and 22 floats)
42 Number of times Snoopy has appeared as a balloon
6 Number of miles of the original parade route
2.5 Number of miles the parade route is today
