The parades of Thanksgiving Day have their own significance and history with regards to American culture and society. On this important day parades are conducted on many places in the United States. The most popular among them being the Macy's Parade of NewYork. The parade has been going on since 1924 and has grown bigger and grander in the tears to come. Today the more than 2.5 million people line the streets every year on Thanskgiving Day to see floats, marching bands, balloons and waving celebrities.
The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is very popular as it features more than 10,000 participants. And they all are accompanied by huge fabulous looking floats of popular comic characters and other favourite figures along with of course the famous Macy's signature giant helium character balloons.
The Macy Parade has little sense of history attached to it. Many of the employees in the Macy's Department store were first generation immigrants. Being proud people of their new American identity and heritage they wanted to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving with the type of festival their parents had loved in Europe. Hence the first parade which was originally called Macy's Christmas Parade was staged by the store. The employees from 145th street in Harlem to Macy's flagship store on 34th street wearing colourful costumes accompanied with joyous celebrations. There were floats, professional bands and live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. At the end of that first parade, as has been the case with every parade since, Santa Claus was welcomed into Herald Square. At this first parade, however, the Jolly Old Elf was enthroned on the Macy's balcony at the 34th Street store entrance, where he was then "crowned" "King of the Kiddies."[5] With an audience of over a quarter of a million people, the parade was such a success that Macy's declared it would become an annual event.
Today the parade has thousandths of participants and the three hour event is telecast to millions of homes across America. There also other parades that are held in other cities that are quite popular and endearing to the American people. These include :