On This Day: The Day of the Zoo Animals, When the Macy’s Parade First Marched
For most Americans, Thanksgiving morning isn’t complete without the sight of giant balloons soaring over the streets of Manhattan. It’s the ultimate curtain-raiser for the holiday season, but the tradition we cherish today is very different from its surprising debut.
Ninety-nine years ago, on November 27, 1924, what we now know as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade first stepped off. Initially, it wasn’t even called the Thanksgiving Day Parade; it was titled the “Macy’s Christmas Parade,” and its sole purpose was to loudly, and literally, kick off the Christmas shopping season.
The parade was the brainchild of the department store’s employees, many of whom were first-generation European immigrants. They wanted to bring the festive energy of their homelands, where parades featuring musicians and elaborate floats were common, to their new American holiday.
The inaugural event was a spectacular six-mile trek, starting all the way up at 145th Street in Harlem and heading down to the Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. A massive crowd of more than 250,000 spectators lined the long route, a sign that this new idea was an instant hit.
However, the stars of the first parade were definitely not cartoon characters. Instead of colossal inflatables, the procession featured **live animals** borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, including bears, camels, donkeys, elephants, and goats.
Macy’s employees, dressed in vibrant costumes as clowns, cowboys, and knights, marched alongside horse-drawn floats depicting classic fairy tales like Little Miss Muffet. The grand finale, as it remains today, was the arrival of Santa Claus. Upon reaching Herald Square, Santa was crowned the “King of the Kiddies” before taking his official holiday post inside the store to begin the season of gift-giving.
The parade’s evolution over the next few years cemented its place in American culture. In 1927, organizers wisely decided to replace the live animals, which sometimes startled children, with giant helium-filled balloons. The very first character to float above New York City was Felix the Cat. An early, risky tradition of releasing the balloons to float away and offering a reward for their return was stopped in 1932 after one nearly caused a plane crash.
Following a three-year hiatus during World War II, the parade’s status as a national institution was sealed. It was famously featured in the 1947 film classic, *Miracle on 34th Street*, and by 1953, the national television broadcast on NBC began bringing the spectacle to millions of homes across the country.
Today, the parade is a monumental production, drawing over 50 million television viewers and 3.5 million people in person to its now shorter, 2.5-mile route. While the live animals are long gone, the original mission is eternal: to gather the nation together on Thanksgiving morning for a little bit of magic, and to usher in the Christmas season with Santa leading the way.