The First Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, 1924

"Santa Claus chose Thanksgiving Day this year to come to town."

That is how The New York Times began its report on Friday, November 28, 1924. The day before, Thursday, November 27, a procession had set off from Convent Avenue and 145th Street in upper Manhattan and made its way down to Macy's on 34th Street. There were floats, bands, clowns, and animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. Santa rode on a sleigh float with reindeer, over a mountain of ice.

It was not billed as a Thanksgiving parade. It was the Macy's Christmas Parade, and it had a job to do. It opened the Christmas shopping season at a store that had just grown, and it ended, on purpose, at a store window. The parade many of us will have on this morning started as an advertisement that marched.

A store that had just grown

In September 1924, the Times reported the formal opening of a 19-story addition to Macy's, with twelve more acres of floor space. The new section on the Seventh Avenue side had gone up between 1922 and 1924. Now the store filled the block between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, from 34th Street to 35th.

Macy's billed it as the largest store in the world. The National Register nomination for the building, prepared for the National Park Service, puts it a little more carefully: the world's largest department store under one roof.

A bigger store needed more shoppers. The Library of Congress describes the parade as an event organized by Macy's employees to boost holiday sales. Thanksgiving was the day it ran. Christmas was the reason.

Who marched

Most of the marchers worked for the store. "The majority of participants were employes of the stores," the Times reported, using the spelling of the day. Employees marched in costume. Clowns and professional entertainers went along with them.

The floats came from the nursery shelf: the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe, Little Miss Muffet, and Red Riding Hood. The animals came from the zoo. The Times listed bears, elephants, and donkeys. The Museum of the City of New York lists tigers, camels, elephants, and donkeys. Accounts of the menagerie differ, and you will often see monkeys added to the list. We could not find a record that puts monkeys in the 1924 parade.

The route

The Times printed the route street by street. From Convent Avenue and 145th Street, the parade went down Convent, Morningside, and Manhattan avenues, turned at 110th Street to Broadway, and followed Broadway down to 34th Street.

Later retellings often say the route ran six miles. The Times gave the streets, not a distance. Either way, it was a long walk in costume, and far longer than today's route, which starts at Central Park West and 77th Street.

The timing is a little loose too. The Times reported that Santa arrived at 9 a.m. A preview in Women's Wear Daily two days earlier had announced that the festivities would begin at 8:30.

King of the Kiddies

Three hours after his arrival, Santa reached Macy's. There, on the marquee over the 34th Street entrance, he was crowned "King of the Kiddies."

Police estimated that almost 10,000 people filled the 34th Street block in front of the store. Macy's own history gives the same round number for the first parade. You will also find claims of a quarter of a million people. We could not find any account from 1924 that supports a figure like that.

Then came the moment the whole morning had been building toward. The Times described it this way:

"When Santa seated himself on the throne he sounded his trumpet, which was the signal for the unveiling of the store's Christmas window, showing 'The Fairy Frolics of Wondertown,' designed and executed by Tony Sarg."

That is the part most histories skip. The first Macy's parade did not end with a balloon or a television camera. It ended with a crowd on 34th Street turning to look at a Christmas window.

Macy's was not the only store with the idea

Department stores in other cities were thinking along the same lines. Philadelphia's City Council has recognized a Gimbels parade on November 25, 1920, though the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that the 1920 event was modest and the local papers barely covered it. In Detroit, Hudson's began its own parade tradition in 1924.

How it became the parade we know

The Christmas name did not last long. In 1927, Felix the Cat became the parade's first balloon. With no helium yet, the Museum of the City of New York says, the first Felix was held above the street on long sticks.

For a few years, Macy's let its balloons go after the parade, with a return address and a reward for whoever found them. That ended after a balloon tangled with an airplane and nearly caused an accident. The Library of Congress dates the incident to 1932.

From 1942 to 1944, during World War II, the parade did not march. Helium and rubber were needed for the war. Television arrived after the war, though the sources disagree on the first national broadcast. The Library of Congress says 1947. Other accounts say 1948.