Thanksgiving Parade
November 23, 2017
In the United States, today is Thanksgiving, an annual holiday for giving thanks and remembering the blessings of life. Among the many Thanksgiving staples—family dinners, football games, shopping, and traveling—one tradition stands out and often marks the holiday as a transition to the Christmas season: the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Such parades take place in cities across the country, and they are usually punctuated with an appearance by Santa Claus, who—according to most sources—was nowhere near the Plymouth Colony in 1621.
The most famous of these events is Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Macy’s, a famous department store, has sponsored the “world’s largest parade” since 1924. That year, Macy’s employees attracted shoppers by marching in outlandish costumes to the flagship store on 34th Street. The march was jazzed up with floats, bands, and animals from the Central Park Zoo. The parade’s end featured Santa Claus waving to kids from the balcony above the Macy’s entrance. A popular and profitable success, the parade was repeated and has since grown to immense sizes. The parade regularly draws more than 3 million people, and it is also broadcast nationally on television. Highlights of the parade include the famous giant balloons representing such pop culture favorites as Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and Superman.
Store owners in other cities have been similarly inspired to draw attention to their businesses on Thanksgiving Day. Philadelphia’s annual parade, which dates from 1920, was sponsored by Gimbels Brothers for decades. (Gimbels was once the largest department store chain in the country.) In Detroit, the Thanksgiving Day Parade was started in 1924 by Hudson’s (also a former department store giant). The city of Chicago started its large Thanksgiving Day Parade to boost the Great Depression-era economy in 1934. (It was originally called the Christmas Caravan.) Houston’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began in 1949, when Santa first rode his sleigh through the snowless streets to Foley’s department store. The Thanksgiving Parade in Plymouth, Massachusetts, claims to be “America’s only historically accurate chronological parade.” No date, accurate or otherwise, is given for Santa Claus’s float bringing up the rear.