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The Macy's parade was enough of a success to push Ragamuffin Day, the typical children's Thanksgiving Day activity from 1870 into the 1920s, into obscurity. Ragamuffin Day 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.
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- HISTORY Vault: America the Story of Us
Look back at the humble origins of an American holiday tradition—the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
As the United States prospered during the Roaring Twenties, so did New York City’s iconic department store—Macy’s. After going public in 1922, R. H. Macy & Co. started to acquire competitors and open regional locations. Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan’s Herald Square did such a brisk business that it expanded in 1924 to cover an entire city block stretching from Broadway to Seventh Avenue along 34th Street.
To showcase the opening of the “World’s Largest Store” and its 1 million square feet of retail space at the start of the busy holiday shopping season, Macy’s decided to throw New York a parade on Thanksgiving morning. In spite of its timing, the parade was not actually about Thanksgiving at all but the next major holiday on the calendar—Christmas. Macy’s hoped its “Christmas Parade” would whet the appetites of consumers for a holiday shopping feast.
History of the Thanksgiving Day Parade
The idea of a store-sponsored Thanksgiving parade did not originate with Macy’s, however, but with Philadelphia’s Gimbel Brothers Department Store, which first staged a Thanksgiving procession in 1920 with 50 people, 15 cars and a fireman dressed as Santa Claus who ushered in the Christmas shopping season. Like Macy’s, J.L. Hudson’s Department Store in Detroit also planned a similar event in 1924. In New York, however, the only Thanksgiving parade that had previously passed through the city’s streets was its peculiar tradition of children painting their faces and donning tattered clothes to masquerade as “ragamuffins” who asked “Anything for Thanksgiving?” as they went door-to-door asking for pennies, apples and pieces of candy.
At 9 a.m. on the sunlit morning of November 27, 1924, Macy’s gave the children of New York a particularly special Thanksgiving treat as a police escort led the start of the parade from the intersection of 145th Street and Convent Avenue. The early-morning start time of “Macy’s Christmas Parade” overlapped with many church services, but it gave spectators plenty of time to make it to the afternoon’s big football game between Syracuse and Columbia universities at the Polo Grounds.
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Nov 21, 2023 · CNN — 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...
Nov 17, 2023 · The first department store to host a Thanksgiving Day parade was Gimbels, a now-defunct Philadelphia-based chain that launched its own parade in the City of Brotherly Love in 1920.
- Kate Hogan
Nov 14, 2023 · Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Over the Years. The first Macy's parade debuted in 1924 with animals from the Central Park Zoo that were replaced by balloons in 1927.
Nov 15, 2023 · Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade History, a Timeline. In 1927, the first balloons bobbed onto the scene. Most notably, a balloon with the likeness of Felix the Cat made its first appearance. In 1928, the production crew opted to inflate Felix with helium instead of air– another first.
Nov 24, 2021 · In 1924, Macy's held its first parade but instead of focusing on Thanksgiving it was called Macy's Christmas Parade. The parade was held just by store employees and the hope was the celebration...
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