The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, the world’s largest parade, is presented by the U.S. based department store chain Macy’s. The parade started in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States with America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. The three-hour parade is held in Manhattan, ending outside Macy’s Herald Square, and takes place from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. It has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953.
About Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in brief
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, the world’s largest parade, is presented by the U.S. based department store chain Macy’s. The parade started in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States with America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit. The three-hour parade is held in Manhattan, ending outside Macy’s Herald Square, and takes place from 9: 00 a. m. to 12: 00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thanksgiving Day. It has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953. Employees at Macy’s department stores have the option of marching in the parade. The 2018 parade was the coldest to date with the temperature at 19 °F. The warmest was in 1933 at 1.1°F with the rain wettest with 72% of rain. The Prom’s kiss during the 2018 parade received significant media attention for being the first time in parade’s history to be filmed as a broadcast-only event in the Herald Square area. The event was downsized and closed to the public in 2020, due to the COVID-19-19 pandemic and social media distancing. The first Mickey Mouse balloon entered the parade in 1934. Since 1984, the balloons have been made by Raven Industries of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, through its Raven Aerostar division. In 2005, new safety measures were incorporated in 2006 to prevent accidents and balloon-related injuries. A law prohibits Macy’s from flying the full-size balloons if sustained winds exceed 20 knots or wind gusts exceed 30 knots ; New York’s tall buildings and mostly uniform grid plan can amplify wind velocity on city streets.
The only time the parade balloons have ever been grounded was 1971, despite several close calls; the only time they have been grounded is in 2005, when a balloon knocked over a street light and injured spectators. The parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944 as a result of World War II, because rubber and helium were needed for the war effort. It resumed in 1945, and became known nationwide shortly afterward, having been prominently featured in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, which included footage of the 1946 festivities. The annual festivities were broadcast on local radio stations in New. York City from 1932 to 1941, and resumed in1945, running through 1951. The Parade continued to grow, with crowds of over one million people lining the parade route in 1933. The last ragamuffin parade in NYC would take place in 1956, and the parade was broadcast on network television in 1948. In the 1930s, the parade featured children going around and performing a primitive version of trick-or-treating, a practice that by the 1920s had come to annoy most adults. The Macy’s parade was enough of a success to push Ragamuff in Day, the typical children’s Thanksgiving day activity from 1870 into the1920s, into obscurity. In 1932, Macy’s asked a marionette to design a window display of a parade for the store.
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This page is based on the article Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
