As far as holiday traditions go, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is about as essential to the cozy November holiday as turkey and stuffing.
While it’s had some interruptions and mishaps along the way, the show has still managed to go on almost every year for nearly a century.
Here are some things you might not know:
It was originally a Christmas parade: The original store was about 20 blocks south on Sixth Avenue near 14th Street. Macy’s has been at its current flagship location, at Broadway and 34th Street, since 1902. Continuing expansion made the location what Macy’s called the “world’s largest store,” an entire city block with more than 1 million square feet of retail space.
In celebration, employees organized a Christmas parade in 1924 featuring “floats, bands, animals from the zoo and 10,000 onlookers,” according to a Macy’s history page. It also started way up at 145th Street. The parade concluded with Santa Claus and the unveiling of the store’s Christmas windows. Three years later, the Christmas Parade was renamed the Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Macy’s didn’t invent the practice: Philadelphia has the oldest Thanksgiving Day parade: Its Gimbels Thanksgiving Day Parade, now the 6ABC — Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade, debuted in 1920s.
The parade was first broadcast on the radio: You had to use your visual imagination when the first broadcasts of the parade took place in 1932 — that’s because they were on the radio. The parade was first televised in 1946 in New York and then nationally on NBC the next year.
The balloons have been around almost the whole time: According to Mental Floss, the balloon attractions debuted in 1927, inspired by a balloon float. Even then, they were massive — one was a 60-foot dinosaur — and, in those days, they had more to deal with than just high winds and crazy weather: Until 1938, an elevated train ran down Sixth Avenue.
